which they were unable to oppose, and gradually sank into the
mass of burghers. In other places they possessed great influence;
but it was an influence widely different from that which was
exercised by the aristocracy of any Transalpine kingdom. They
were not petty princes, but eminent citizens. Instead of
strengthening their fastnesses among the mountains, they
embellished their palaces in the market-place. The state of
society in the Neapolitan dominions, and in some parts of the
Ecclesiastical State, more nearly resembled that which existed in
the great monarchies of Europe. But the Governments of Lombardy
and Tuscany, through all their revolutions, preserved a different
character. A people, when assembled in a town, is far more
formidable to its rulers than when dispersed over a wide extent
of country. The most arbitrary of the Caesars found it necessary
to feed and divert the inhabitants of their unwieldy capital at
the expense of the provinces. The citizens of Madrid have more
than once besieged their sovereign in his own palace, and
extorted from him the most humiliating concessions. The Sultans
have often been compelled to propitiate the furious rabble of
Constantinople with the head of an unpopular Vizier. From the
same cause there was a certain tinge of democracy in the
monarchies and aristocracies of Northern Italy.

Thus liberty, partially indeed and transiently, revisited Italy;
and with liberty came commerce and empire, science and taste, all
the comforts and all the ornaments of life. The Crusades, from
which the inhabitants of other countries gained nothing but
relics and wounds, brought to the rising commonwealths of the
Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas a large increase of wealth, dominion,
and knowledge. The moral and geographical position of those