were merchants.  Idleness was unknown in Venice.  Instead of excogitating new constitutions or planning vengeance against hereditary foes the Venetian attended to his commerce on the sea, swayed distant provinces, watched the interests of the state in foreign cities, and fought the naval battles of the republic.  It was the custom of Venice to employ her patricians only on the sea as admirals, and never to intrust her armies to the generalship of burghers.  This policy had undoubtedly its wisdom; for by these means the nobles had no opportunity of intriguing on a large scale in Italian affairs, and never found the chance of growing dangerously powerful abroad.  But it pledged the State to that system of paid condottieri and mercenary troops, jealously watched and scarcely ever trustworthy, which proved nearly as ruinous to Venice as it did to Florence.

It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that which is presented by Florence to Venice.  While Venice pursued one consistent course of gradual growth, and seemed immovable, Florence remained in perpetual flux, and altered as the strength of factions or of party-leaders varied.[1] When the strife of Guelfs and Ghibellines, Neri, and Bianchi, had exhausted her in the fourteenth century, she submitted for a while to the indirect ascendency of the kings of Naples, who were recognized as Chiefs of the Guelf Party.  Thence she passed for a few months into the hands of a despot in the person of the Duke of Athens (1342-43).  After the confirmation of her republican liberty, followed a contest between the proletariat and the middle classes (Ciompi 1378).  During the fifteenth century she was kept continually disturbed by the rivalry of her great merchant families.  The rule of the Albizzi, who fought the Visconti and extended the Florentine territory by numerous conquests, was virtually the despotism of a close oligarchy.  This phase of her career was terminated by the rise of the Medici, who guided her affairs with a show of constitutional equity for four generations.  In 1494, this state of things was violently shaken.  The Florentines expelled the Medici, who had begun to throw off their mask and to assume the airs of sovereignty; then they reconstituted their Commonwealth as nearly as they could upon the model of Venice, and to this new form of government Savonarola gave a quasi-theocratic complexion by naming Christ the king of Florence.[2] But the internal elements of the discord were too potent for the maintenance of this regime.  The Medici were recalled; and this time Florence fell under the shadow of Church-rule, being controlled by Leo X. and Clement VII., through the hands of prelates whom they made the guardians and advisers of their nephews.  In 1527 a final effort for liberty shed undying luster on the noblest of Italian cities.  The sack of Rome had paralyzed the Pope.  His family were compelled to quit the Medicean palace.  The Grand Council was restored:  a Gonfalonier