Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/659

The Republic of San Mai-ino 649 Such are the main facts of San Marino's long history. The causes of its preservation during more than fifteen centuries are to be found in the protection which it obtained, first from the Monte- fehro family, then from their successors in the duchy of Urbino, and then, after the extinction of that duchy, from the Popes. No doubt the tact of these peasant statesmen, and their shrewdness in declining offers of territory at the expense of their neighbors, was also of inestimable service to the state ; while the poverty of Monte Titano made it not worth plundering. So, alone of the Italian republics, San Marino still exists, " a pattern," as Napoleon I. said, of a medieval commonwealth, with all those aristocratic arrangements by which those oligarchies were governed. Like Andorra, she remains as an interesting survival, and, as such, will probably be allowed to live on uninjured. William Miller.