EPISTLES V., VI. AND VII.--Next come the three great political letters, glorified pamphlets on the enterprise of Henry of Luxemburg. Letter v., the manifesto to the Princes and Peoples of Italy, seems to have been written in September or October, 1310, before Henry crossed the Alps. It announces the advent of Henry, the bridegroom and glory of Italy, as bringing a new era of peace, declares the rightful authority and historical sanctity of the Empire, exhorting the peoples to free and joyous submission, and those who, like the writer himself, have suffered injustice to be merciful in their anticipated triumph. The letter, one of the noblest of Dante’s utterances, is a landmark in the growth of the national idea in Italy; rulers and peoples are admonished as members of one body; the good tidings are announced to the nation as a whole; the writer’s Italian citizenship is placed before his Florentine origin, when he subscribes himself: “The humble Italian, Dante Alighieri, a Florentine unjustly exiled.” It was in the bitter indignation caused by the Guelf opposition, the alliance between Florence and King Robert, and the doubt occasioned by the Emperor’s own delay in Lombardy, that Dante from the Casentino wrote the terrible Letters vi. and vii., on March 31st, 1311, to the Florentines, “the most wicked Florentines within,” and on April 17th to Henry himself, “the most sacred triumphant and only lord.” The former denounces the Florentines for their rebellion, their “shrinking from the yoke of liberty,” their attempt to make their civic life independent of that of Rome, and, in prophetic fashion, warns them of their coming destruction at the hands of “the prince who is the giver of the law.” In the latter, adopting the part of Curio towards Caesar (which he himself condemns in the _Inferno_), Dante urges the Emperor without further delay to turn his forces upon Florence, who “sharpens the horns of rebellion against Rome which made her in her own image and after her likeness.” The poet’s attitude is that of the Hebrew prophets; his motive, the conviction that his native city had adopted a line of policy opposed to the true interests of Italy. These three letters are contained in the Vatican MS.; Letters v. and vii. (of both of which early Italian translations are extant) also in the S. Pantaleo MS., and there is a third (fifteenth century) MS. of the letter to the Emperor.