[1] He goes so far as to assert that Leo X. and Clement VII. wished to give a liberal constitution to Florence, but that their plans were frustrated by the avarice and jealousy of the would-be oligarchs.  See Arch.  Stor. vol. i. pp. 121,131.  The passages quoted from his ‘Apologia de’ Cappucci,’ relative to Machiavelli, Filippo Strozzi, and Francesco Guicciardini (Arch.  Stor. vol. i. pp. xxxix. xxxviii.), are very instructive; with such greedy self-seeking oligarchs, it was impossible for the Medicean Popes to establish any government but a tyranny in Florence.

Thus from these five authors, writing from different points of view, we gain a complete insight into the complicated politics of Florence, at a period when her vitality was still vigorous, but when she had lost all faculty for centralized or concerted action.  In sagacity, in the power of analysis with which they pierce below the surface, trace effects to causes, discern character, and regard the facts of history as the proper subject-matter of philosophical reflection, they have much in common.  He who has seen Rembrandt’s painting of the dissecting-room might construct for himself another picture, in which the five grave faces of these patient observers should be bent above the dead and diseased body of their native city.  Life is extinct.  Nothing is left for science but, scalpel in hand, to lay bare the secret causes of dissolution.  Each anatomist has his own opinion to deliver upon the nature of the malady.  Each records the facts revealed by the autopsy according to his own impressions.

The literary qualities of these historians are very different, and seem to be derived from essential differences in their characters.  Pitti is by far the most brilliant in style, concentrated in expression to the point of epigram, and weighty in judgment.  Nardi, though deficient in some of the most attractive characteristics of the historian, is invaluable for sincerity of intention and painstaking accuracy.  The philosophical, rhetorical, and dramatic passages which add so much splendor to the works of Guicciardini are absent from the pages of Nardi.  He is anxious to present a clear picture of what happened; but he cannot make it animated, and he never reflects at length upon the matter of his history.  At the same time he lacks the naiivete which makes Corio, Allegretti, Infessura, and Matarazzo so amusing.  He gossips as little as Machiavelli, and has no profundity to make up for the want of piquancy.  The interest of his chronicle is greatest in the part which concerns Savonarola, though even here the peculiarly reticent and dubitative nature of the man is obvious.  While he sympathizes with Savonarola’s political and moral reforms, he raises a doubt about his inner sincerity, and does not approve of the attitude of the Piagnoni.[1] In his estimation of men Nardi was remarkably cautious, preferring always to give an external relation of events, instead of analyzing