families to withdraw their capital from trade, sink it in land, create entails in perpetuity on eldest sons, and array themselves with gimcrack titles which he liberally supplied.  Even Venice showed at this epoch a contempt for the commerce which had brought her into a position of unrivaled splendor.  This wilful depression of industry was partly the result of Spanish aristocratic habits, which now invaded Italian society.  But it was also deliberately chosen as a means of extinguishing freedom.  Finally, if war proved now less burdensome, the exhaustion of Italy and the decay of military spirit rendered the people liable to the scourge of piracy.  The whole sea-coast was systematically plundered by the navies of Barbarossa and Dragut.  The inhabitants of the ports and inland villages were carried off into slavery, and many of the Italians themselves drove a brisk trade in the sale of their compatriots.  Brigandage, following in the wake of agricultural depression and excessive taxation, depopulated the central provinces.  All these miseries were exacerbated by frequent recurrences of plagues and famines.

It is characteristic of the whole tenor of Italian history that, in spite of the virtual hegemony which the Spaniards now exercised in the peninsula, the nation continued to exist in separate parcels, each of which retained a certain individuality.  That Italy could not have been treated as a single province by the Spanish autocrat will be manifest, when we consider the European jealousy to which so summary an exhibition of force would have given rise.  It is also certain that the Papacy, which had to be respected, would have resisted an openly declared Spanish despotism.  But more powerful, I think, than all these considerations together, was the past prestige of the Italian States.  Europe was not prepared to regard that brilliant and hitherto respected constellation of commonwealths, from which all intellectual culture, arts of life, methods of commerce, and theories of political existence had been diffused, as a single province of the Spanish monarchy.  The Spaniards themselves were scarcely in a position to entertain the thought of reducing the peninsula to bondage vi et armis.  And if they had attempted any measure tending to this result, they would undoubtedly have been resisted by an alliance of the European powers.  What they sought, and what they gained, was preponderating influence in each of the parcels which they recognized as nominally independent.

The intellectual and social life of the Italians, though much reduced in vigor, was therefore still, as formerly, concentrated in cities marked by distinct local qualities, and boastful of their ancient glories.  The Courts of Ferrara and Urbino continued to form centers for literary and artistic coteries.  Venice remained the stronghold of mental unrestraint and moral license, where thinkers uttered their thoughts with tolerable freedom, and libertines indulged their