of society in the Neapolitan dominions, | posterity is too often deceived by the and in some parts of the Ecclesiastical vague hyperboles of poets and rheState, more nearly resembled that which toricians, who mistake the splendour of existed in the great monarchies of Eu- a court for the happiness of a people. rope. But the governments of Lom- Fortunately, John Villani has given us bardy and Tuscany, through all their an ample and precise account of the revolutions, preserved a different cha- state of Florence in the early part of racter. A people, when assembled in a the fourteenth century. The revenue town, is far more formidable to its of the Republic amounted to three hunrulers than when dispersed over a wide dred thousand florins; a sum which, extent of country. The most arbitrary allowing for the depreciation of the of the Cæsars found it necessary to feed precious metals, was at least equivalent and divert the inhabitants of their un- to six hundred thousand pounds sterwieldy capital at the expense of the ling; a larger sum than England and provinces. The citizens of Madrid Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded have more than once besieged their annually to Elizabeth. The manufac sovereign in his own palace, and ex-ture of wool alone employed two huntorted from him the most humiliating dred factories and thirty thousand concessions. The Sultans have often workmen. The cloth annually probeen compelled to propitiate the fu-duced sold, at an average, for twelve rious rabble of Constantinople with the hundred thousand florins; a sum fully head of an unpopular Vizier. From equal in exchangeable value to two the same cause there was a certain millions and a half of our money. tinge of democracy in the monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Italy.

Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. Eighty banks conThus liberty, partially indeed and ducted the commercial operations, not transiently, revisited Italy; and with of Florence only but of all Europe. liberty came commerce and empire, The transactions of these establishscience and taste, all the comforts and ments were sometimes of a magnitude all the ornaments of life. The Cru- which may surprise even the contemsades, from which the inhabitants of poraries of the Barings and the Rothsother countries gained nothing but childs. Two houses advanced to Edrelics and wounds, brought to the rising ward the Third of England upwards commonwealths of the Adriatic and of three hundred thousand marks, at a Tyrrhene seas a large increase of time when the mark contained more wealth, dominion, and knowledge. The silver than fifty shillings of the present moral and geographical position of day, and when the value of silver was those commonwealths enabled them to more than quadruple of what it now is. profit alike by the barbarism of the The city and its environs contained a West and by the civilisation of the hundred and seventy thousand inhaEast. Italian ships covered every sea.bitants. In the various schools about Italian factories rose on every shore. ten thousand children were taught to The tables of Italian moneychangers read; twelve hundred studied arithwere set in every city. Manufactures metic; six hundred received a learned flourished. Banks were established. education. The operations of the commercial machine were facilitated by many useful and beautiful inventions. We doubt whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, have at the present time reached so high a point of wealth and civilisation as some parts of Italy had attained four hundred years ago. Historians rarely descend to those details from which alone the real state of a community can be collected. Hence

The progress of elegant literature and of the fine arts was proportioned to that of the public prosperity. Under the despotic successors of Augustus, all the fields of the intellect had been turned into arid wastes, still marked out by formal boundaries, still retaining the traces of old cultivation, but yielding neither flowers nor fruit. The deluge of barbarism came. It swept away all the landmarks. It obliterated

all the signs of former tillage. But it | sculpture, were munificently encourfertilised while it devastated. When aged. Indeed it would be difficult to it receded, the wilderness was as the name an Italian of eminence, during garden of God, rejoicing on every side, the period of which we speak, who, laughing, clapping its hands, pouring whatever may have been his general forth, in spontaneous abundance, every character, did not at least affect a love thing brilliant, or fragrant, or nourish- of letters and of the arts. ing. A new language, characterised Knowledge and public prosperity by simple sweetness and simple energy, continued to advance together. Both had attained perfection. No tongue attained their meridian in the age of ever furnished more gorgeous and vivid Lorenzo the Magnificent. We cannot tints to poetry; nor was it long before refrain from quoting the splendid pasa poet appeared who knew how to sage, in which the Tuscan Thucydides employ them. Early in the fourteenth describes the state of Italy at that century came forth the Divine Comedy, period. "Ridotta tutta in somma pace beyond comparison the greatest work e tranquillità, coltivata non meno ne' of imagination which had appeared luoghi più montuosi e più sterili che since the poems of Homer. The fol- nelle pianure e regiom più fertili, ne lowing generation produced indeed no sottoposta ad altro imperio che de' suoi second Dante: but it was eminently medesimi, non solo era abbondantisdistinguished by general intellectual ac-sima d' abitatori e di ricchezze ; ma tivity. The study of the Latin writers illustrata sommamente dalla magnifihad never been wholly neglected in cenza di molti principi, dallo splendore Italy. But Petrarch introduced a more di molte nobilissime e bellissime città, profound, liberal, and elegant scholar- dalla sedia e macstà della religione, ship, and communicated to his country- fioriva d' uomini prestantissimi nell' men that enthusiasm for the literature, amministrazione delle cose pubbliche, the history, and the antiquities of e d' ingegni molto nobili in tutte le Rome, which divided his own heart scienze, ed in qualunque arte preclara with a frigid mistress and a more frigid Muse. Boccaccio turned their attention to the more sublime and graceful models of Greece.

From this time, the admiration of learning and genius became almost an idolatry among the people of Italy. Kings and republics, cardinals and doges, vied with each other in honouring and flattering Petrarch. Embassies from rival states solicited the honour of his instructions. His coronation agitated the Court of Naples and the people of Rome as much as the most important political transaction could have done. To collect books and antiques, to found professorships, to patronise men of learning, became almost universal fashions among the great. The spirit of literary research allied itself to that of commercial enterprise. Every place to which the merchant princes of Florence extended their gigantic traffic, from the bazars of the Tigris to the monasteries of the Clyde, was ransacked for medals and manuscripts. Architecture, painting, and

ed industriosa." When we peruse this just and splendid description, we can scarcely persuade ourselves that we are reading of times in which the annals of England and France present us only with a frightful spectacle of poverty, barbarity, and ignorance. From the oppressions of illiterate masters, and the sufferings of a degraded peasantry, it is delightful to turn to the opulent and enlightened States of Italy, to the vast and magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every article of comfort or luxury, the fac tories swarming with artisans, the Apennines covered with rich cultivation up to their very summits, the Po wafting the harvests of Lombardy to the granaries of Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With peculiar pleasure, every cultivated mind inust repose on the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence, the halls which rang with the mirth of Pulci, the cell where twinkled the midnight lamp of PoliD

tian, the statues on which the young eye of Michael Angelo glared with the frenzy of a kindred inspiration, the gardens in which Lorenzo meditated some sparkling song for the May-day dance of the Etrurian virgins. Alas for the beautiful city! Alas, for the wit and the learning, the genius and the love!

during which the fields did not require the presence of the cultivators sufficed for a short inroad and a battle. These operations, too frequently interrupted to produce decisive results, yet served to keep up among the people a degree of discipline and courage which rendered them, not only secure, but formidable. The archers and billmen of

the middle ages, who, with provisions for forty days at their backs, left the fields for the camp, were troops of the same description.

“Le donne, e i cavalier, gli affanni, e gli agi, Che ne 'nvogliava amore e cortesia Là dove i cuor son fatti si malvagi." A time was at hand, when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to But when commerce and manufacbe poured forth and shaken out over tures begin to flourish a great change those pleasant countries, a time of takes place. The sedentary habits of slaughter, famine, beggary, infamy, the desk and the loom render the exerslavery, despair. tions and hardships of war insupport

In the Italian States, as in many na-able. The business of traders and tural bodies, untimely decrepitude was artisans requires their constant prethe penalty of precocious maturity. sence and attention. In such a comTheir early greatness, and their early decline, are principally to be attributed to the same cause, the preponderance which the towns acquired in the political system.

In a community of hunters or of shepherds, every man easily and necessarily becomes a soldier. His ordinary avocations are perfectly compatible with all the duties of military service. However remote may be the expedition on which he is bound, he finds it easy to transport with him the stock from which he derives his subsistence. The whole people is an army; the whole year a march. Such was the state of society which facilitated the gigantic conquests of Attila and Tamerlane.

But a people which subsists by the cultivation of the earth is in a very different situation. The husbandman is bound to the soil on which he labours. A long campaign would be ruinous to him. Still his pursuits are such as give to his frame both the active and the passive strength necessary to a soldier. Nor do they, at least in the infancy of agricultural science, demand his uninterrupted attention. At particular times of the year he is almost wholly unemployed, and can, without injury to himself, afford the time necessary for a short expedition. Thus the legions of Rome were supplied during its earlier wars. The season

munity there is little superfluous time; but there is generally much superfluous money. Some members of the society are, therefore, hired to relieve the rest from a task inconsistent with their habits and engagements.

The history of Greece is, in this, as in many other respects, the best commentary on the history of Italy. Five hundred years before the Christian era, the citizens of the republics round the Egean Sea formed perhaps the finest militia that ever existed. As wealth and refinement advanced, the system underwent a gradual alteration. The Ionian States were the first in which commerce and the arts were cultivated, and the first in which the ancient discipline decayed. Within eighty years after the battle of Platæa, mercenary troops were every where plying for battles and sieges. In the time of De mosthenes, it was scarcely possible to persuade or compel the Athenians to enlist for foreign service. The laws of Lycurgus prohibited trade and manufactures. The Spartans, therefore, continued to form a national force long after their neighbours had begun to hire soldiers. But their military spirit declined with their singular institutions. In the second century before Christ, Greece contained only one na tion of warriors, the savage highlanders of Ætolia, who were some generations

behind their countrymen in civilisation | growing power of the cities, where it and intelligence. had not exterminated this order of

All the causes which produced these men, had completely changed their effects among the Greeks acted still habits. Here, therefore, the practice of more strongly on the modern Italians. employing mercenaries became uniInstead of a power like Sparta, in its versal, at a time when it was almost nature warlike, they had amongst them unknown in other countries. an ecclesiastical state, in its nature When war becomes the trade of a pacific. Where there are numerous separate class, the least dangerous slaves, every freeman is induced by the course left to a government is to form strongest motives to familiarise himself that class into a standing army. It is with the use of arms. The common- scarcely possible, that men can pass wealths of Italy did not, like those of their lives in the service of one state, Greece, swarm with thousands of these without feeling some interest in its household enemies. Lastly, the mode greatness. Its victories are their vicin which military operations were con- tories. Its defeats are their defeats. ducted during the prosperous times of The contract loses something of its Italy was peculiarly unfavourable to mercantile character. The services of the formation of an efficient militia. the soldier are considered as the effects Men covered with iron from head to of patriotic zeal, his pay as the tribute foot, armed with ponderous lances, and of national gratitude. To betray the mounted on horses of the largest breed, power which employs him, to be even were considered as composing the remiss in its service, are in his eyes strength of an army. The infantry the most atrocious and degrading of was regarded as comparatively worth-crimes.

less, and was neglected till it became When the princes and commonreally so. These tactics maintained wealths of Italy began to use hired their ground for centuries in most parts troops, their wisest course would have of Europe. That foot soldiers could withstand the charge of heavy cavalry was thought utterly impossible, till, towards the close of the fifteenth century, the rude mountaineers of Switzerland dissolved the spell, and astounded the most experienced generals by receiving the dreaded shock on an impenetrable forest of pikes.

The use of the Grecian spear, the Roman sword, or the modern bayonet, might be acquired with comparative ease. But nothing short of the daily exercise of years could train the man at arms to support his ponderous panoply, and manage his unwieldy weapon. Throughout Europe this most important branch of war became a separate profession. Beyond the Alps, indeed, though a profession, it was not generally a trade. It was the duty and the amusement of a large class of country gentlemen. It was the service by which they held their lands, and the diversion by which, in the absence of mental resources, they beguiled their leisure. But in the Northern States of Italy, as we have already remarked, the

been to form separate military establishments. Unhappily this was not done. The mercenary warriors of the Peninsula, instead of being attached to the service of different powers, were regarded as the common property of all. The connection between the state and its defenders was reduced to the most simple and naked traffic. The adventurer brought his horse, his weapons, his strength, and his experience, into the market. Whether the King of Naples or the Duke of Milan, the Pope or the Signory of Florence, struck the bargain, was to him a matter of perfect indifference. He was for the highest wages and the longest term. When the campaign for which he had contracted was finished, there was neither law nor punctilio to prevent him from instantly turning his arms against his late masters. The soldier was altogether disjoined from the citizen and from the subject.

The natural consequences followed. Left to the conduct of men who neither loved those whom they defended, nor hated those whom they opposed, who

were often bound by stronger ties to| Among the polished Italians, enriched the army against which they fought by commerce, governed by law, and than to the state which they served, passionately attached to literature, every who lost by the termination of the con- thing was done by superiority of intelflict, and gained by its prolongation, ligence. Their very wars, more pacific war completely changed its character. than the peace of their neighbours, Every man came into the field of battle required rather civil than military quaimpressed with the knowledge that, in lifications. Hence, while courage was a few days, he might be taking the pay the point of honour in other countries, of the power against which he was then ingenuity became the point of honour employed, and fighting by the side of in Italy. his enemies against his associates. The From these principles were deduced, strongest interests and the strongest by processes strictly analogous, two feelings concurred to mitigate the hos-opposite systems of fashionable moratility of those who had lately been lity. Through the greater part of Eubrethren in arms, and who might soon rope, the vices which peculiarly belong be brethren in arms once more. Their to timid dispositions, and which are the common profession was a bond of union natural defence of weakness, fraud, and not to be forgotten even when they hypocrisy, have always been most diswere engaged in the service of con- reputable. On the other hand, the extending parties. Hence it was that cesses of haughty and daring spirits operations, languid and indecisive be- have been treated with indulgence, and yond any recorded in history, marches even with respect. The Italians reand counter-marches, pillaging expedi-garded with corresponding lenity those tions and blockades, bloodless capitu- crimes which require self-command, lations and equally bloodless combats, address, quick observation, fertile inmake up the military history of Italy vention, and profound knowledge of during the course of nearly two cen-human nature. turies. Mighty armies fight from sunrise to sunset. A great victory is won. Thousands of prisoners are taken; and hardly a life is lost. A pitched battle seems to have been really less dangerous than an ordinary civil tumult.

Such a prince as our Henry the Fifth would have been the idol of the North. The follics of his youth, the selfish ambition of his manhood, the Lollards roasted at slow fires, the prisoners massacred on the field of battle, Courage was now no longer neces- the expiring lease of priestcraft resary even to the military character.newed for another century, the dreadful Men grew old in camps, and acquired legacy of a causeless and hopeless war the highest renown by their warlike bequeathed to a people who had no inachievements, without being once re-terest in its event, every thing is forquired to face serious danger. The gotten but the victory of Agincourt. political consequences are too well Francis Sforza, on the other hand, was

known. The richest and most en- the model of Italian heroes. He made lightened part of the world was left undefended to the assaults of every barbarous invader, to the brutality of Switzerland, the insolence of France, and the fierce rapacity of Arragon, The moral effects which followed from this state of things were still more remarkable.

his employers and his rivals alike his tools. He first overpowered his open enemies by the help of faithless allies; he then armed himself against his allies with the spoils taken from his enemies. By his incomparable dexterity, he raised himself from the precarious and dependent situation of a military advenAmong the rude nations which lay turer to the first throne of Italy. To beyond the Alps, valour was absolutely such a man much was forgiven, hollow indispensable. Without it none could friendship, ungenerous enmity, violated be eminent; few could be secure. faith. Such are the opposite errors Cowardice was, therefore, naturally which men commit, when their morality considered as the foulest reproach. is not a science but a taste, when they