hen that city had been long troubled with
seditions, tumults, and wars, for the most part unprosperous, they still
retained such strength, that when Charles VIII. of France, being
admitted as a friend with his whole army, which soon after conquered the
kingdom of Naples, thought to master them, the people, taking arms,
struck such a terror into him, that he was glad to depart upon such
conditions as they thought fit to impose. Machiavel reports, that in
that time Florence alone, with the Val d'Arno, a small territory
belonging to that city, could, in a few hours, by the sound of a bell,
bring together 135,000 well-armed men; whereas now that city, with all
the others in that province, are brought to such despicable weakness,
emptiness, poverty, and baseness, that they can neither resist the
oppressions of their own prince, nor defend him or themselves if they
were assaulted by a foreign enemy. The people are dispersed or
destroyed, and the best families sent to seek habitations in Venice,
Genoa, Rome, Naples, and Lucca. This is not the effect of war or
pestilence; they enjoy a perfect peace, and suffer no other plague than
the government they are under."[619] From the usurper Cosmo down to the
imbecile Gaston, we look in vain for any of those unmixed qualities
which should raise a patriot to the command of his fellow-citizens. The
Grand Dukes, and particularly the third Cosmo, had operated so entire a
change in the Tuscan character, that the candid Florentines, in excuse
for some imperfections in the philanthropic system of Leopold, are
obliged to confess that the sovereign was the only liberal man in his
dominions. Yet that excellent prince himself had no other notion of a
national assembly, than of a body to represent the wants and wishes, not
the will of the people.

23.

An Earthquake reeled unheededly away!
Stanza lxiii. line 5.

"And such was their mutual animosity, so intent were they upon the
battle, that the earthquake, which overthrew in great part many of the
cities of Italy, which turned the course of rapid streams, poured back
the sea upon the rivers, and tore down the very mountains, was not felt
by one of the combatants."[620] Such is the description of Livy. It may
be doubted whether modern tactics would admit of such an abstraction.

The site of the battle of Thrasimene is not to be mistaken. The
traveller from the