No quite satisfactory history of Italy has appeared in English. The standard modern Italian history, that of Cesare CantÙ, has been translated into French; but in English there has been no general history of any length since Procter and Spalding. Col. Procter's History of Italy (published as by G. Perceval, 1825; 2nd ed. 1844) has merit, but is not abreast of modern studies. Spalding's Italy and the Italian Islands (3 vols. 3rd ed. 1845) is an excellent work of its kind, covering Italian history from the earliest times, but is also in need of revision. The comprehensive work of Dr. T. Hodgkin, Italy and her Invaders (2nd ed. 1892-99, 8 vols.) comes down to the death of Charlemagne.

Of special histories there are several. One of the best and latest is that of The Lombard Communes, by Prof. W.F. Butler (1906). Captain H.E. Napier, in the preface to his Florentine History (1846, 6 vols.) rightly contended that "no people can be known by riding post through their country against time"; but his six learned volumes are ill-written and ill-assimilated. The best complete history of Florence, the typical Italian Republic, is the long Histoire de Florence by F.T. Perrens (9 tom. 1877-84; Eng. tr. of one vol. by Hannah Lynch, 1892). T.A. Trollope's History of the Commonwealth of Florence (1865, 4 vols.) is less indigestible than Napier's, but is gratuitously diffuse, and is written in large part in unfortunate imitation of the pseudo-dramatic manner of Carlyle. It is further blemished by an absurd index. Neither this nor Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt's History of the Venetian Republic (1860, 4 vols.; new ed. in two large vols. 1900) has much sociological value, though the latter is copious and painstaking, albeit also diffuse. The Genoa of J. Theodore Bent (1881) is an interesting sketch; but the well-read author fails in orderly construction.

A good short manual is the Italy of Mr. Hunt (Macmillan's Historical Course); and an excellent compendium is supplied by the two treatises of Oscar Browning (1894-95), Guelphs and Ghibellines (covering the period 1250-1409) and The Age of the Condottieri, covering the Renaissance, to 1530. Bryce and Hallam are alike helpful to general views; and it is still profitable to return to the condensed History of the Italian Republics by Sismondi (written for the English "Cabinet CyclopÆdia" in 1832), though it needs revision in detail. In his two volumes entitled The Fall of the Roman Empire (1834) that author has given a useful conspectus of the period covered by Gibbon's great work. Sismondi's larger and earlier Histoire des rÉpubliques italiennes has never ceased to be well worth study, though the Geschichte von Italien of H. Leo (1829) improves upon it in several respects. It has been revised and condensed (Routledge, 1 large vol. 1906) by Mr. William Boulting. For the early period the most comprehensive survey is the Geschichte Italiens im Mittelalter of Ludo Moritz Hartmann (3 Bde. in 5, 1897-1911) which comes down to the tenth century.

Among modern monographs that of Alfred von Reumont on Lorenzo de' Medici (Eng. tr. 1876, 2 vols.) in nearly every way supersedes the old work of Roscoe, whose Leo X, again, is practically superseded by later works on the Renaissance, in particular those of Burckhardt (Eng. tr. of Geiger's ed. in 1 vol. 1892) and the late J.A. Symonds. Miss Duffy has a good chapter on Florentine trade and finance in her Story of the Tuscan Republics, 1892; and the short work of F.T. Perrens, La civilisation florentine du 13e au 16e siÈcle (1892—in the BibliothÈque d'histoire illustrÉe) is luminous throughout; but Ranke's History of the Latin and Teutonic Nations (Eng. tr. 1887), which deals with the Italy of 1494-1514, is little more than a sand-heap of incident. On the economic side there is a good research in Pignotti's essay on Tuscan Commerce in his History of Tuscany (Eng. tr. 1823, vol. iii). Much interesting detail is given, with much needless rhetoric, in The Guilds of Florence, by Edgcumbe Staley, 1906.

Of great general value is the elaborate work of Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter (4te Aufl. 8 Bde. 1886-96; Eng. tr. by Mrs. Hamilton, 8 vols. 1895-1902), which, however, suffers from the disparity of its purposes, combining as it does, a topographical history of the city of Rome with a full history of its politics. It remains a valuable mass of materials rather than a history proper. The same criticism applies to the very meritorious Geschichte der Stadt Rom of A. von Reumont (3 Bde. 1867-70), which begins with the very origin of the city, and comes down to our own time.

But there has risen in contemporary Italy a school of historical students who are rewriting the history of the great period in the light of the voluminous archives which have been preserved by municipalities. One outcome of this line of investigation is Prof. Villari's The Two First Centuries of Florentine History (Eng. tr. of first 2 vols. 1894). New light, further, has been thrown on the commercial history of Italy in the Dark Ages and early Middle Ages by the admirable research of Prof. W. von Heyd, of which the French translation by Furcy Raynaud, Histoire du commerce du Levant an moyen age (1886, 2 tom.) is recast and considerably enlarged by the author, while the Renascence period is illuminated by R. PÖhlmann's treatise, Die Wirthschafts Politik der Florentiner Renaissance und das Princip der Verkehrsfreiheit (Leipzig, 1878).