movement, and made them worthy to represent Florence, the city of genius, in the fifteenth century.  While thus founding and cementing their dynastic influence upon the basis of a widespread popularity, the Medici employed persistent cunning in the enfeeblement of the Republic.  It was their policy not to plant themselves by force or acts of overt tyranny, but to corrupt ambitious citizens, to secure the patronage of public officers, and to render the spontaneous working of the State machinery impossible.  By pursuing this policy over a long series of years they made the revival of liberty in 1494, and again in 1527, ineffectual.  While exiled from Florence, they never lost the hope of returning as masters, so long as the passions they had excited, and they alone could gratify, remained in full activity.  These passions were avarice and egotism, the greed of the grasping Ottimati, the jealousy of the nobles, the self-indulgence of the proletariate.  Yet it is probable they might have failed to recover Florence, on one or other of these two occasions, but for the accident which placed Giovanni de’ Medici on the Papal chair, and enabled him to put Giulio in the way of the same dignity.  From the accession of Leo in 1513 to the year 1527 the Medici ruled Florence from Rome, and brought the power of the Church into the service of their despotism.  After that date they were still further aided by the imperial policy of Charles V., who chose to govern Italy through subject princes, bound to himself by domestic alliances and powerful interests.  One of these was Cosimo, the first Grand Duke of Tuscany.

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THE DEBT OF ENGLISH TO ITALIAN LITERATURE

To an Englishman one of the chief interests of the study of Italian literature is derived from the fact that, between England and Italy, an almost uninterrupted current of intellectual intercourse has been maintained throughout the last five centuries.  The English have never, indeed, at any time been slavish imitators of the Italians; but Italy has formed the dreamland of the English fancy, inspiring poets with their most delightful thoughts, supplying them with subjects, and implanting in their minds that sentiment of Southern beauty which, engrafted on our more passionately imaginative Northern nature, has borne rich fruit in the works of Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakspere, Milton, and the poets of this century.

It is not strange that Italy should thus in matters of culture have been the guide and mistress of England.  Italy, of all the European nations, was the first to produce high art and literature in the dawn of modern civilisation.  Italy was the first to display refinement in domestic life, polish of manners, civilities of intercourse.  In Italy the commerce of courts first developed a society of men and women, educated by the same traditions of humanistic culture.  In Italy the principles of government were first discussed