Dead, alas! For the old liberties of the great Republic of Amalfi have been extinct for more than half a thousand years, and it is in consequence difficult for us to realise that the quaint noisy squalid picturesque little city by the sea-shore, huddled into the narrow gorge of the Canneto, is that self-same Amalfi whose navies rode triumphant over the Mediterranean before the days of the Early Crusades. Yet Amalfi, which may be reckoned amongst the first-born of that fair family of medieval cities that their prolific parent the land of Italy brought forth in an age of darkness, was also the foremost to droop and die, her glories scattered and passed before Florence had ceased to be an obscure country town. In this case History presents to us a most forcible, not to say an unique example of the origin, rise and decline of a power, all occurring within a short space of time. Amalfi springs, as it were, out of the void as a city of importance, for no Roman colony occupied its site in antique times. Its very nomenclature is a puzzle to scholars, and the usual statement that it owed its name to Byzantine settlers coming hither from the ancient town of Melfi in the Basilicata does not sound very convincing, though for want of a better theory it must suffice. Why, when, and by whom the city was in reality founded remains an enigma, yet we learn from a passage in one of the letters of St Gregory the Great that the place was of sufficient size to be governed by a bishop in the sixth century. By the tenth we find the Republic of Amalfi already risen to a position of commanding importance, and holding its own against the rival states between which its territories were wedged; the dukedom of Naples to the west and the principality of Salerno to eastward. Dexterously playing on the greed and prejudices of the various tyrants who ruled Naples and Salerno, and occasionally allying itself with them in order to repel the fierce attacks of their common enemy, the Saracenic hordes who were then harrying the Lucanian coast, Amalfi continued to uphold its political freedom and dignity in the face of immense difficulties. And in gratitude for the vigour with which the Amalfitani had waged war against the infidel invaders, Pope Leo IV. in course of time conferred upon the Duke or Doge, the chief magistrate of the Republic, the title of “Defender of the Faith.” Nominally under the suzerainty of the Greek Emperor at Constantinople, Amalfi was practically independent; its system of government was conducted on lines somewhat akin to those of aristocratic Venice; its population is said to have exceeded fifty thousand in the capital city alone; its boundaries extended from the Promontory of Minerva on the west to the town of Cetara upon the confines of Salerno; whilst many daughter-towns of wealth and importance, such as Scala and Ravello, sprang into being within the narrow limits of the sea-girt republic. Owning a small and by no means fertile extent of land,