commonwealths enabled them to profit alike by the barbarism of
the West and by the civilisation of the East. Italian ships
covered every sea. Italian factories rose on every shore. The
tables of Italian moneychangers were set in every city.
Manufactures flourished. Banks were established. The operations
of the commercial machine were facilitated by many useful and
beautiful inventions. We doubt whether any country of Europe, our
own excepted, have at the present time reached so high a point
of wealth and civilisation as some parts of Italy had attained
four hundred years ago. Historians rarely descend to those
details from which alone the real state of a community can be
collected. Hence posterity is too often deceived by the vague
hyperboles of poets and rhetoricians, who mistake the splendour
of a court for the happiness of a people. Fortunately, John
Villani has given us an ample and precise account of the state of
Florence in the early part of the fourteenth century. The revenue
of the Republic amounted to three hundred thousand florins; a sum
which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious metals, was
at least equivalent to six hundred thousand pounds sterling; a
larger sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded
annually to Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two
hundred factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually
produced sold, at an average, for twelve hundred thousand
florins; a sum fully equal in exchangeable value to two millions
and a half of our money. Four hundred thousand florins were
annually coined. Eighty banks conducted the commercial
operations, not of Florence only but of all Europe. The
transactions of these establishments were sometimes of a
magnitude which may surprise even the contemporaries of the
Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced to Edward the