I have been more influenced, however, by a desire to make some of those who read only English acquainted with an Italian author who seems to me entitled to a larger public than his own people. There is no good reason why a greater number of Italian writers should not be favoured with an English dress; and it is probably more the effect of accident than want of merit in Italian writers that their works are much more rare in our tongue than those of French and German authors. The younger historical writers of the time, to which class M. Celesia belongs, have peculiar claims upon our attention, because they are the first truly independent writers of the Peninsula, and their works are the first fruits of liberal institutions and a Free Press. It would be only a first homage to their worth and sincere devotion to liberal principles to translate their best works into our language rather than absorb the substance of them into our own books. This reasoning has induced me to turn aside for a little while from the labour of preparing a history of Genoa to render M. Celesia’s beautiful Italian into an English, which I freely confess to be imperfect in comparison with the original. The first impression of the general reader may be that this book treats of events so distant in time, and so different in moral scenery, from the political and social conditions in which we live as to afford little or no instruction to us. No history, except that of one’s own country, affords precise forms in which to mould the present; and what are called historical parallels do not really exist, since every series of political events has peculiar elements which make close analogies with any other series impossible. Those who quote events in the history of other times and peoples as containing precise instruction for present national action usually deceive their auditors all the more completely from being deceived themselves. It is only in the abundant matter of general principles that history contains lessons of political wisdom. In this sense the work before the reader is not without valuable instruction. M. Celesia has given us a view of the social and political condition of the masses who have too often been excluded from history because they had been excluded from power in the state.