as might have been expected from a noble married to Caterina Salviati,
the niece of Leo and the aunt of Cosimo, who had himself been courtier
to Clement and privy councilor to Alessandro, sustains the Medicean note
throughout his commentaries.

[1] He goes so far as to assert that Leo X. and Clement VII. wished
to give a liberal constitution to Florence, but that their plans
were frustrated by the avarice and jealousy of the would-be
oligarchs. See _Arch. Stor_. vol. i. pp. 121,131. The passages
quoted from his 'Apologia de' Cappucci,' relative to Machiavelli,
Filippo Strozzi, and Francesco Guicciardini (_Arch. Stor_. vol. i.
pp. xxxix. xxxviii.), are very instructive; with such greedy
self-seeking oligarchs, it was impossible for the Medicean Popes to
establish any government but a tyranny in Florence.

Thus from these five authors, writing from different points of view, we
gain a complete insight into the complicated politics of Florence, at a
period when her vitality was still vigorous, but when she had lost all
faculty for centralized or concerted action. In sagacity, in the power
of analysis with which they pierce below the surface, trace effects to
causes, discern character, and regard the facts of history as the proper
subject-matter of philosophical reflection, they have much in common. He
who has seen Rembrandt's painting of the dissecting-room might construct
for himself another picture, in which the five grave faces of these
patient observers should be bent above the dead and diseased body of
their native city. Life is extinct. Nothing is left for science but,
scalpel in hand, to lay bare the secret causes of dissolution. Each
anatomist has his own opinion to deliver upon the nature of the malady.
Each records the facts revealed by the autopsy according to his own
impressions.