death of Lorenzo. In a supplement the author gives a convenient chronological view of the entire work, genealogical tables of the Medici, Pazzi, Soderini, Visconti, and Sforza families, an account of Lorenzo's death-bed, and a bibliography of works relating to this period. We regret to say that this work suffers from that chronic German complaint, want of index, the lack of which is very insufficiently supplied by the table of contents.

The author has preserved the due proportions of his materials; the literary and social do not outweigh as with Roscoe the pure historical side, while a glance at the table of contents will show they are not neglected. On the contrary, the author has presented a picture of the social and literary life of Florence in the latter half of the fifteenth century unrivalled for completeness and accuracy. He is singularly moderate in his judgments, and like his friend Gino Capponi* prefers to let his readers draw their own inferences from the facts he has carefully gathered and placed before them. If he does not assume a denunciatory tone towards Lorenzo, he at least does not conceal or garble the facts in regard to him, which are, after all, sufficiently condemnatory in themselves.

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It seems at first sight strange that a city (we should say State, but Florence was the State for so many years that it is hard to separate them), the one political fear of which was that one of its own citizens should become its tyrant, should fall under the yoke of such a family as the Medici, who first plundered it, and then destroyed forever its independence. The hold of the Medici upon the State was but temporarily relaxed from the time that Cosimo returned from exile in 1434. The State drove them out several times, but they always returned to fix themselves more firmly on its vitals, until the body corporate was too exhausted to do aught but suffer. The early history of the family is buried in an obscurity which Von Reumont cannot clear up. They did not belong to the historical families of Florence, and the first trace of them appears near the end of the twelfth century. A hundred years later, one of them, Ardingo, was one of the Priors, and in 1296 gonfaloniere, which office was filled three years later by his brother Guccio. The sarcophagus which once held the latter's remains bears the well-known coat-of-arms of the family and that of the guild of the calimala (woollen cloth), to which he belonged. The origin of the family as well as of its armorial bearings is absolutely unknown. By some the origin of the balls (palle, hence the name palleschi as applied to the adherents of the Medici) has been

*See "North American" for October, 1875.

carried as far back as Perseus and the apples of Hesperides, others refer them to the time of Charlemagne, and claim that they represent the hilly region of Mugello. Others still think they indicate descent from some knight who assumed as his arms the dents left in his shield during some combat with a giant. Those more moderate in their views attribute the balls to the supposed medical origin of the family, and it has been hinted that they were in some way connected with the pawnbrokers' sign, All these stories, it is needless to say, have no foundation.

The family belonged to the popolani, and not until the latter half of the fourteenth century did any member of it assume a prominent position in Florentine politics. Then Averardo (surnamed Bicci) and his cousin Salvestro made the name well known. The latter, who was several times gonfaloniere, is best known from his connection with the celebrated Ciompi riot in 1378. Averardo was the head of the afterwards famous Medici family, and laid the foundation of the wealth to which so much of its success was due. His grandson was Cosimo, Pater Patriæ, Lorenzo's grandfather. Von Reumont draws a darker picture of him than is usually given. He was of a retiring disposition, simple in his tastes and carefully concealing the part he took in the affairs of the State. He inherited a large fortune, and increased it greatly by his own efforts, beginning that unfortunate system of peculation which led to such disastrous results in Lorenzo's day. How great Cosimo's influence was, may be seen by the fact that he compelled Venice and Naples to make peace with Florence by withdrawing his credit from them. His conscience was not, however, clear as to the means by which part at least of his fortune had been acquired, and the large sums he spent upon the building of churches and other religious edifices give the measure of his uneasiness about the future. When he came to die, two things troubled him: first, that he had not done as much good as he had desired, and been able to do; and second, that he left his son Piero in feeble health.

This sickly son, surnamed the Gouty, occupies an unfortunate position between his celebrated father and his still more famous son. He was, however, a person of much ability, and managed to transmit unimpaired to his son the power he had inherited from his father. He died in 1469, fifty-three years old, and was, so to speak, succeeded by his son Lorenzo, afterwards termed il Magnifico, then twenty-one years old.

One of the most difficult points in the history of the Medici (before the principato) is to fix with certainty the nature and extent of the political power they enjoyed in the commonwealth. They were

regarded as princes (after the conspiracy of the Pazzi the State gave Lorenzo a body-guard), but held no public position, and yet were able to direct the commonwealth as their own business, appropriate its revenues, wage war, make alliances; in short, for all practical purposes they were as much "tyrants" as the rulers of Milan and Verona. Von Reumont gives a tolerably clear idea of the tenure of the Medici power in the first volume of his work, page 292, et seq., and some light is also thrown on the subject from Lorenzo's private journal, in which, following the example of his ancestors, he has jotted down the most memorable events of his life. He says that the second day after his father's death the principal men of the city and State came to his house to condole with him on his father's death, and to ask him to assume the care of the city and State as his father and grandfather had done; he adds: "which thing, as being incompatible with my age, and of great weight and danger, I accepted unwillingly, and only for the preservation of our friends and property, because it is difficult to live in Florence without having authority in the State (senza lo stato)." Francesco Guicciardini, in one of his works, which has but lately seen the light (Del Reggimento di Firenze), says: "The government of the Medici was a party government, usurped by the party, kept by tyranny neither violent nor cruel, a few cases excepted, where it was necessary to be so; a government founded on the acquiescence of the weak, the union of the interests of the more powerful with its own interest, and on the oppression of all those who assumed an air of independence." The matter of Lorenzo's succession, then, was arranged by the "party," which, the evening after Piero's burial, held a meeting to which all the principal citizens who were in favor of the existing government were invited. Some six hundred of the flower of the city met in the cloister of St. Antonio, near the Porta Faenza, and Tommaso Soderini made a speech and proposed that Lorenzo should be continued in his father's position. Some others remarked, "that it was necessary to have a lord and head, who alone would have to manage the concerns of the State of this noble signory." A sad change indeed in Florentine public opinion when such words could be openly spoken, much less listened to and followed. The manner in which the party kept the reins in its own hands was as follows. The ordinance of September 6, 1476, had placed the election of the highest magistrates for the next ten years in the hands of electors who were named by the Council of the Hundred. The heads of the party were accustomed on extraordinary occasions to select the names of these electors and hand them to the aforesaid council, which at once

accepted and appointed them, as the council in turn was composed, if not entirely of members of the party, at least of those who did not oppose it. It happened, however, sometimes, that not all the candidates proposed were appointed, and it is easy to see that the time might come when the election might be in the hands of electors unfavorable to the Medici cause. In order to avoid this danger various plans were introduced. In the summer of 1470 the government, then entirely devoted to the Medici, introduced a resolution in the Council of the Hundred, providing for the establishment of an electoral college, consisting of all the electors then remaining from 1434, forty in number, with five new ones to be named, from which number five were to be drawn yearly who were to appoint the signori and the gonfaloniere from the list of citizens capable of holding office. This outrageous attempt to set up forty-five tyrants over the city failed. Six months later, however, a similar plan succeeded, namely, the signori for July and August, together with the electors who officiated that year, named those for the next, the Council of the Hundred confirming them by a bare majority, where previously a two-thirds vote had been necessary. It is needless to say that at the next election in July only the names of reliable persons were put on the tickets, and the government came more and more into the hands of the few. This was all done by the party itself while Lorenzo was still young, and before his great personal influence was felt, and before the attempts on his life increased his popularity and strengthened his hold on the State. How strong this hold was, his later life shows, when he was the real head of the State, when popes, kings, and princes addressed him, and ambassadors corresponded with him.

The period of Lorenzo's greatness has been the subject of many volumes, but the reader who has heretofore depended on Roscoe will find in the work before us abundance of new material which will probably modify most seriously the views advanced by him, while at the same time it will mitigate the extreme opinions of Villari and Trollope.

Lorenzo's last years were rendered unhappy by bodily infirmities and the anxieties of his position, which was necessarily always a critical one. There must have been many things on his conscience which he could not relieve, like Cosimo, by lavish gifts to the church. His life was full enough of dramatic incidents, but its final scene was in some respects the most dramatic of all. After trying various mineral baths in vain, he was carried in March of 1492 to his favorite villa of Careggi. Here he grew rapidly worse, and set his house

in order for his approaching death. A priest of San Lorenzo administered the viaticum, and then, strangest of the many strange events in the history of the Magnificent, Savonarola entered his chamber, having been summoned at Lorenzo's express desire. Of what followed there are two very different versions, one by Burlamacchi, the friend and biographer of the friar, the other by Poliziano. The latter account is the one received by Von Reumont, and runs as follows: "Scarcely had Pico left Careggi when Fra Girolamo of Ferrara, a man distinguished for his learning and holy life, and an eminent preacher of the gospel, entered the room and exhorted the sick man to hold fast to the faith. Lorenzo answered that his faith was unshaken. The friar then urged him to lead in the future a better life, and he said he would with all his might. Finally, Savonarola exhorted him, if necessary, to meet death calmly. The dying man said that nothing would be sweeter if it were the will of God. The friar was on the point of departing, when Lorenzo said: 'Give me a blessing, father, before you leave me.' And with bowed head and countenance, and with all the appearance of religious earnestness, he responded correctly and consciously to the friar's words and prayers, undisturbed by the now open sorrow of his family."

Burlamacchi's account, as given by Villari (Horner's translation, Vol. I., p. 141) is as follows: "Pico had no sooner retired than Savonarola entered, and approached respectfully the bed of the dying Lorenzo, who said that there were three sins he wished to confess to him, and for which he asked absolution: the sacking of Volterra ; the money taken from the Monte delle Fanciulle, which had caused so many deaths; and the blood shed after the conspiracy of the Pazzi. While saying this, he again became agitated, and Savonarola tried to calm him, by frequently repeating, 'God is good, God is merciful.' Lorenzo had scarcely left off speaking, when Savonarola added, 'Three things are required of you.' 'And what are they, father?' replied Lorenzo. Savonarola's countenance became grave, and, raising the fingers of his right hand, he thus began: "First, it is necessary that you should have a full and lively faith in the mercy of God.' That I have most fully.' 'Secondly, it is necessary to restore that which you unjustly take away, or enjoin your sons to restore it for you.' This requirement appeared to cause him surprise and grief; however, with an effort, he gave his consent, by a nod of his head. Savonarola then rose up, and while the dying prince shrank with terror in his bed, the confessor seemed to rise above himself when saying, 'Lastly, you must restore liberty to the people of Florence.' His countenance was solemn, and his voice