ests which had given them birth, and proved an
insurmountable obstacle, long after they had ceased to have any real
significance, to the pacification of the country.[1] The only important
state which maintained an unbroken dynastic succession of however
disputed a nature at this period was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
The only great republics were Venice, Genoa, and Florence. Of these,
Genoa, after being reduced in power and prosperity by Venice, was
overshadowed by the successive lords of Milan; while Florence was
destined at the end of a long struggle to fall beneath a family of
despots. All the rest of Italy, especially to the north of the
Apennines, was the battle-field of tyrants, whose title was
illegitimate--based, that is to say, on no feudal principle, derived in
no regular manner from the Empire, but generally held as a gift or
extorted as a prize from the predominant parties in the great towns.

[1] So late as 1526 we find the burlesque poet Folengo exclaiming
(_Orlandino_, ii. 59)--

Che se non fusser le gran parti in quella,
Dominerebbe il mondo Italia bella.

If we examine the constitution of these tyrannies, we find abundant
proofs of their despotic nature. The succession from father to son was
always uncertain. Legitimacy of birth was hardly respected. The last La
Scalas were bastards. The house of Aragon in Naples descended from a
bastard. Gabriello Visconti shared with his half-brothers the heritage
of Gian Galeazzo. The line of the Medici was continued by princes of
more than doubtful origin. Suspicion rested on the birth of Frederick of
Urbino. The houses of Este and Malatesta honored their bastards in the
same degree as their lawful progeny. The great family of the Bentivogli
at Bologna owed their importance at the end of the fifteenth century to
an obscure and probably spurious pretender, dragged from the
wool-factories of Florence by the policy of Cosimo de' Medici. The sons
of popes ranked with the proudest of aristocratic families. Nobility was
less regarded in the choice of a ruler than personal ability. Power
once acquired was maintained by force, and the history of the ruling
families is one long catalogue of crimes. Yet the cities thus governed
were orderly and prosperous. Police regulations were carefully
established and maintained by governors whose interest it was to rule a
quiet state. Culture was widely diffused without regard to rank or
wealth. Public edifice