of philosophy and literature, saw three tyrants pollute the throne of Tuscany. The brutal and voluptuous Alexander was suc ceeded by Cosimus I. the founder of the second house of dè Medici, and whose dissimulation and cruelty equalled that of Philip II. his cotemporary and his model, and both of them were followed by Francis I. who, by his ferocity and suspicion, completed what Cosimus, his father, had left undone.

Rome itself, which at the beginning of this century had seen in Leo X. a liberal and great Pope, a friend to literature, aud a generous protector to arts and sciences, now under the pontificate of Paul IV. Pius IV. and Pius V. saw again, in a regular and systematic manner, recommence the persecution which Paul II. had begun against literature and knowledge.

From this time the Italians were lost, and lost for ever. Trembling under the iron yoke which tyranny, oppression, and bigotry had imposed on them, they were no longer allowed to think for themselves; and their enslaved press could only produce what still, in our present day, is branded with the con. temptuous appellation of del seicento.

It is true that the reigns of Charles V. and Philip II. seem both to form a brilliant epoch in the annals of literature and arts; but it is equally incontrovertible, that they were the fatal periods, when the human mind was surrounded by fetters, and when genius, not being allowed to go forward, was obliged to fall back. These princes gathered the fruit which had been raised by their predecessors; but, as they in their turn endeavoured to check every future growth, after the lapse of fifty years, there were no successors to the great men who were then no more.

Indeed it is difficult, compressed as we are within our narrow limits, to make the reader understand the mistrust and the apathy which formed the characteristic features of the reigns of the three Philips of Spain-Philip II, III. and IV. who held the sovereignty over one half of Italy; that is Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia; and who exercised nearly the same absolute authority over the estates of the Pope, and of the Dukes who had implored their protection. Enormous contributions, which were very unequally and very foolishly raised, had ruined the commerce of the country and annihilated its agriculture. Extortions of a still more ruinous nature had enriched the governors, and filled the nation with hatred and contempt against a government so blind and so unjust. The system of perpetual war, in which the Cabinet of L'Escuriale persisted as long as the House of Austria reigned over Spain, bad drained these rich Italian provinces of men and money, and left them exposed to the annual depredations of the Turks, to the invasions of the French,

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to a small but continual and underhand war, which was carried on by the Piedmontese, and what was the most ruinous of all, to the maintenance of the Spanish and German troops which were quartered amongst thein. In this way, having enslaved the Italians, the Spanish government, conscious of its own demerits, endeavoured to stifle in its subjects even the most just complaints. Its efforts were directed to the degradation of their ruinds, that they should not discover the baseness of their situation, and the worthlessness of their rulers. For this reason, every effort of the mind was considered as an attempt against government. All freedom of writing and printing was taken away from the Italians, and every discussion, every political deliberation, was considered as high treason. Nor were printers and booksellers alone the subjects of the most severe scrutiny; even private individuals, who possessed any of the forbidden books, were exposed to the most heavy punishments, both civil and religious. To exercise the authority of a police still more severe, government had called upon the Inquisition, and this sanguinary and terrible tribunal had become the faithful guardian of every species of tyranny.

However, from what has been said, our readers are not to understand that the Spanish government respected religion more than any other government of Europe, or at least, that the Spanish clergy enjoyed the liberty which had been taken away from the nation. Priesthood has never experienced a more violent persecution than that which was set on foot at the end of the sixteenth, and the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the Viceroys of Naples, against those who seemed inclined to receive the Council of Trent. In this respect, the Court of Madrid shewed more sense, and a greater and more solid doctrine of tyranny, than people are generally apt to think. To weaken the other powers of Europe, the Cabinet of the Escurial wished that they all should admit the Council of Trent; but to preserve unlimited his own authority, Philip rejected the canons of this dangerous council, and forbade that they should be. received in his estates. But this resolution, which enforced with consistency and frankness, would have injured the religious independence of his dominions, by the gloomy politics of Philip, became a new source of vexation for his enslaved subjects. Seeing a perpetual contradiction between his declarations and his conduct, they could never guess at his object, nor foresee the end of his caprice and cruelty.

In these contradictory circumstances abuse alone was respected, and the rights of the citizens were continually violated. Men suspected not of guilty actions, but of unsound opinions, were punished as criminals. They were exposed to excruciat

ing pains, not as a punishment, but as a trial, and yet in the midst of so much severity, common justice was not administered. All convents and all churches served as an asylum to delinquents; every viceroy, every governor, every commander of a town, kept a gang of banditti under his protection, and to them he insured the impunity of their crimes, as a reward for the violences which they committed under his orders. Such measures on the part of the - rulers could not but produce the same consequences on the side of the subjects. The convents soon began to enlist under their orders those whom they had sheltered against the persecution of justice; and the government, during the conspiracy of the Monk Campanella, saw with astonishment that the Monks of Calabria could muster under arms many thousands of outlawed.

This Monk Campanella is well known among the literati, by his curious works upon philosophy and magic. Enraged at the fetters which government was laying round the Clergy, he succeeded in forming a conspiracy amongst the Monks to establish a republic in Calabria. Some Bishops had already taken the command of the conspirators; three hundred Monks had shared in the conspiracy, and fifteen hundred banditti were already under arms. The revolution ought to have burst as soon as the Turkisk fleet of Murat Bey, should have appeared in sight of Stilo. The fleet, in fact, appeared on the 14th of September, the appointed day, but Campanella, the night before, had been arrested by the order of the viceroy, and his companious were already perishing under different punishments.

In such a state of terrible anarchy, the Italians often attempted to shake off the detested yoke. The revolutions of the years 1647 and 1648, both in Naples and Messina, would have deprived Spain of these two kingdoms; but unfortunately they were both repressed, and treason, and not force, re-established the hated tyrant on the throne. Milan would have followed the example of the south of Italy, but did not dare. Its territory was continually infested and crossed by troops who were carrying on the war in France and Germany; and the discontent of the people could only produce the aggrandisement of the house of Savoy, which was establishing its power at the expence of the Austrians.

During the whole of this century, the republic of Genoa was entirely under the controul of Spain. The Pope, who, on account of the religious war, which had broken out in Germany, had attached himself to the cause of the Spanish king, being now tired of his dependence, wished more than once to free himself from the master he had chosen; but he was always punished as if guilty of rebellion. The republic of Venice was allowed to remain neutral, preserving the most scrupulous si

lence

lence and the most unalterable apathy. Religious inquisition had not fettered the thoughts of the Spaniards more than political inquisition had enchained the very souls of the Venetians, lest they should offend, by their writings or their speech, their powerful and dangerous neighbours. The Dukes of Italy, by luxury and pleasure, endeavoured to forget the importance they had lost. Indeed, some of the Archdukes of Tuscany preserved the honour of the name of Medicis, and encouraged those arts and those branches of learning which could never excite the alarm of the most suspicious government. The Academy del Cimento, and the gallery of Cardinal Leopoldo, cast some lustre on Florence; but the power of thinking had been banished from that celebrated capital ever since Cosimo I. to please the King of Spain and the Pope, had delivered into the hands of the Inquisition, his favourite and his friend, the unfortunate Pietro Carnesecchi. By the extinction of the legitimate possessor, the House of Este lost the Dukedom of Ferrara, but the bastard branch, in retaining Modena, could not retain the qualities which had constituted the glory of their ancestors. The House of Consaga having been cruelly punished with the pillage of Mantua for her attachment to France, hastened its own ruin by dissipation and luxury. The Farnese family had been raised to the sovereignty of Parma and Piacenza, but in spite of this new grandeur, its members were either voluptuous tyrants or of imbecil creatures. The famous Prince Alexander, the prodigy of his age, and the rival of Henry IV. having attached himself to Spain, never returned to his estate after he had once commanded the armies of Philip II. Flattery, however, has palliated the faults and the crimes of the Farnese family, and the historians of the age praise the protection which Alphonso afforded to the Opera, which was invented during this age. The warlike leaders of the House of Savoy were the only Princes who might be excluded from amongst the despicable sovereigus of Italy; but being engaged in a ruinous war, they trembled for their existence, and often adopted arbitrary and tyrannical measures to obtain the means of which they stood in so much need.

Such was the state of literary despotism in Italy, that Alessandro Marchetti having translated the poem of Lucretius de Naturâ Rerum, with a felicity and a mellow strength, which place him much above his age, Cosimo III. de' Medici would never allow the book to be printed, because it contained the exposition of the doctrine of Epicurus.

This wretched state in which Italy existed during the seventeenth century, this tyranny of its bigotted government, and the loss of all national character in its inhabitants, continued for some time, and in some provinces it changed even for the

worse.

worse. The Dukes of Savoy had assumed the title of Kings, and their military government, jealous and intolerant, had bought its apparent independence, by the most submissive obedience to the imperious and vindictive commands of the Pope. The imprisonment alone of Giannone is sufficient to shew to what length a vicious government will go to satisfy its ambition and its revenge. In the dukedom of Milan, which had fallen under the dominion of Austria, if the quarrels between Joseph and the Pope, about the temporal jurisdiction of the Clergy, allowed a more mitigated doctrine to be taught concerning the authority of the papal chair, yet this benefit, great as it may appear, was fully compensated by the harsh and violent measures which were employed to supply with men and money au avaricious and needy government, wholly intent on its financial embarassments.

The great dukedom of Tuscany had often changed its appearance, and though for many years its condition was no better than that of the rest of Italy, yet it was evident that in its bosom there was forming a principle, which was repugnant to the bigotry of the age, and which in time might have produced more worthy ideas of national independence. But this change did. not begin to take place much before the middle of the eighteenth century, many years after the death of Cosimo III. This bigotted, jealous, and mistrusting Prince kept the minds and the conscience of his people under the most cruel restraint. Priests and monks were the only agents of his government, and the whole of Tuscany had the appearance of a convent. His son John Gaston tranferred to his mistresses the power which his father had given to his confessors; he endeavoured to forget his infirmities, and tried to remove from his eyes the prospect of the extinction of his family, by a continued profligacy. At his death, Tuscany fell under the dominion of Francis I. of Lorena, the busband of Maria Theresa. Weak and irresolute, this Prince governed his new estate by German rules and German favourites. Under him the Monks lost still more their influence; and though the jealousy of his government, in freeing the nation from the tyranny of the Clergy, had increased its own, yet the Tuscans under his government acquired a spirit of moral independence, which only required to be put in motion to produce the most salutary effects. This was done by Leopold his son. On his mounting the throne of Florence, this magnanimous Prince turned all the activity of his mind to render philosophy subservient to the advantage of his administration. With this intention, he gave to his subjects the example of political studies, and he invited them to follow his example. Accustomed for the last two hundred years to a slavery of thought, the Italians were surprised at the liberty which the Tuscans en

joyed.