that their citizens were traders.  The Venetians carried on the commerce of the Levant; the Florentines were manufacturers and bankers:  the one town sent her sons forth on the seas to barter and exchange; the other was full of speculators, calculating rates of interest and discount, and contracting with princes for the conduct of expensive wars.  The mercantile character of these Italian republics is so essential to their history that it will not be out of place to enlarge a little on the topic.  We have seen that the Florentines rendered commerce a condition of burghership.  Giannotti, writing the life of one of the chief patriots of the republic,[1] says:  ‘Egli stette a bottega, come fanno la maggior parte de’ nostri, cosi nobili come ignobili.’  To quote instances in a matter so clear and obvious would be superfluous:  else I might show how Bardi and Peruzzi, Strozzi, Medici, Pitti, and Pazzi, while they ranked with princes at the Courts of France, or Rome, or Naples, were money-lenders, mortgagees and bill-discounters in every great city of Europe.  The Palle of the Medici, which emboss the gorgeous ceilings of the Cathedral of Pisa, still swing above the pawnbroker’s shop in London.  And though great families like the Rothschilds in the most recent days have successfully asserted the aristocracy of wealth acquired by usury, it still remains a surprising fact that the daughter of the mediaeval bankers should have given a monarch to the French in the sixteenth century.

[1] Sulle azioni del Ferruccio, vol. i. p. 44.  The report of Marco Foscari on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of illustrious Florentine citizens.  See Appendix ii.  Even Piero de’ Medici refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was a tradesman.

A very lively picture of the modes of life and the habits of mind peculiar to the Italian burgher may be gained by the perusal of Agnolo Pandolfini’s treatise, Del Governo della Famiglia.  This essay should be read side by side with Castiglione’s Cortegiano, by all who wish to understand the private life of the Italians in the age of the Renaissance.[1] Pandolfini lived at the time of the war of Florence with Filippo Visconti the exile, and the return of Cosimo de’ Medici.  He was employed by the republic on important missions, and his substance was so great that, on occasion of extraordinary aids, his contributions stood third or fourth upon the list.  In the Councils of the Republic he always advocated peace, and in particular he spoke against Impresa di Lucca.  As age advanced, he retired from public affairs, and devoted himself to study, religious exercises, and country excursions.  He possessed a beautiful villa at Signa, notable for the splendor of its maintenance in all points which befit a gentleman.  There he had the honor on various occasions of entertaining Pope Eugenius, King Rene, Francesco Sforza, and the