when the absolute Medici rule began, is so turbulent, crowded, and
complex that it would require the whole of this volume to describe
it. The changes in the government of the city would alone occupy a
good third, so constant and complicated were they. I should have to
explain the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the Neri and the Bianchi,
the Guilds and the Priors, the gonfalonieri and the podesta, the
secondo popolo and the buonuomini.

Rather than do this imperfectly I have chosen to do it not at all;
and the curious must resort to historians proper. But there is at
the end of the volume a table of the chief dates in Florentine and
European history in the period chosen, together with births and deaths
of artists and poets and other important persons, so that a bird's-eye
view of the progress of affairs can be quickly gained, while in this
chapter I offer an outline of the great family of rulers of Florence
who made the little city an aesthetic lawgiver to the world and with
whom her later fame, good or ill, is indissolubly united. For the rest,
is there not the library?

The Medici, once so powerful and stimulating, are still ever in the
background of Florence as one wanders hither and thither. They are
behind many of the best pictures and most of the best statues. Their
escutcheon is everywhere. I ought, I believe, to have made them
the subject of my first chapter. But since I did not, let us without
further delay turn to the Via Cavour, which runs away to the north from
the Baptistery, being a continuation of the Via de' Martelli, and pause
at the massive and dignified palace at the first corner on the left.
For that is the Medici's home; and afterwards we will step into
S. Lorenzo and see the church which Brunelleschi and Donatello made
beautiful and Michelangelo wonderful that the Medici might lie there.