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Rh seemed to afford a new hope for the exiles, and Dante rushed back to Italy to stir up his brothers in banishment, and to address impassioned appeals to the monarchy who had it in his power to open Florence to them, and reinstate them in their rights, as they fondly hoped. The changes wrought by time and trouble, and those strange new companions with whom misfortune makes us acquainted, which had converted a born Guelfist into a Ghibelline, relying utterly upon the emperor, had been long at work upon Dante's mind; but our space forbids any discussion of the differences between those two parties, which have produced as many books as they did wars, and in which few of our readers, we believe, will take any very lively interest. Those who do, will find abundant means of studying the question in other ways. The emperor was willing enough to interfere—very willing, indeed, to establish a power of arbitration and partial sovereignty over the great independent cities who owned allegiance to no king—but his power was not equal to his will; and though he was able temporarily to restore the exiles of some other small towns (until his back was turned, when they were re-banished summarily), he could not even succeed to this extent in Florence. And thus Dante's last hope of triumphant restoration came to an end.

It was after this that he took up his residence at Verona, in the palace of the Scaligeri or Della Scala family, with the splendid young prince called Can' Grande—Cane the Great—whom the poet loved deeply, and quarrelled with bitterly, but never, it would seem, ceased to love. He was received here with open arms, and treated at first with the greatest honour, but either