Every Italian artist and man of letters in an age of singular intellectual brilliancy tasted or hoped to taste of his bounty.

Oaks and wild prunus, wild vines and sumachs, various kinds of maple, the dOdan (Enkianthus Japonicus Hook.)a wonderful bush which in autumn develops a hue of ruddy redbirches and other trees, all add multitudinous colors to the brilliancy of a spectacle which is further enriched by masses of feathery bamboo.

They were all gentle and sympathetic and I felt the charm of their manner as much as I had felt the brilliancy of their essays and poems.

But the second, notwithstanding the brilliancy of the narrative and the masterly art in the grouping of events, suffers from a radical defect which renders it a misleading guide.

This determination closes the first chapter of his life; the second, from 1304 to 1314, is occupied by his contest for the kingdom, which was really won at Bannockburn, though disputed until the treaty of Northampton in 1328; the last, from 1314 to his death in 1329, was the period of the establishment of his government and dynasty by an administration as skilful as his generalship. It is to the second of these that historians, attracted by its brilliancy even amongst the many romances of history and its importance to Scottish history, have directed most of their attention, and it is during it that his personal character, tried by adversity and prosperity, gradually unfolds itself.