the two boys, Alessandro and Ippolito.  Of these, Alessandro was a mulatto, his mother having been a Moorish slave in the Palace of Urbino; and whether his father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a base groom, was not known for certain.  To such extremities were the Medici reduced.  In order to keep their house alive, they were obliged to adopt this foundling.  It is true that the younger branch of the family, descended from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo, still flourished.  At this epoch it was represented by Giovanni, the great general known as the Invincible, whose bust so strikingly resembles that of Napoleon.  But between this line of the Medici and the elder branch there had never been true cordiality.  The Cardinal mistrusted Giovanni.  It may, moreover, be added, that Giovanni was himself doomed to death in the year 1526.

Giulio de’ Medici was left in 1521 to administer the State of Florence single-handed.  He was archbishop, and he resided in the city, holding it with the grasp of an absolute ruler.  Yet he felt his position insecure.  The republic had no longer any forms of self-government; nor was there a magistracy to whom the despot could delegate his power in his absence.  Giulio’s ambition was fixed upon the Papal crown.  The bastards he was rearing were but children.  Florence had therefore to be furnished with some political machinery that should work of itself.  The Cardinal did not wish to give freedom to the city, but clockwork.  He was in the perilous situation of having to rule a commonwealth without life, without elasticity, without capacity of self-movement, yet full of such material as, left alone, might ferment, and breed a revolution.  In this perplexity, he had recourse to advisers.  The most experienced politicians, philosophical theorists, practical diplomatists, and students of antique history were requested to furnish him with plans for a new constitution, just as you ask an architect to give you the plan of a new house.  This was the field-day of the doctrinaires.  Now was seen how much political sagacity the Florentines had gained while they were losing liberty.  We possess these several drafts of constitutions.  Some recommend tyranny; some incline to aristocracy, or what Italians called Governo Stretto; some to democracy, or Governo Largo; some to an eclectic compound of the other forms, or Governo Misto.  More consummate masterpieces of constructive ingenuity can hardly be imagined.  What is omitted in all, is just what no doctrinaire, no nostrum can communicate—­the breath of life, the principle of organic growth.  Things had come, indeed, to a melancholy pass for Florence when her tyrant, in order to confirm his hold upon her, had to devise these springs and irons to support her tottering limbs.

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