This constantly recurring feeling, which at bottom is but the expression of an intensified individuality, will be found to lie at the root of Italian national disaster; and to be an operating cause, to a greater degree probably than any other circumstance, of the secular impossibility—or extreme difficulty, let us more hopefully say—of constructing a nation out of the materials bequeathed by the Italian middle ages to modern times. The intense and exclusive devotion to family in the men who have ancestors, and the same feeling translated into devotion equally intense and exclusive to a municipality, in the men who have none, act as a mutually repellent force on the constituent parts of society, are a dissolvent instead of a uniting and constructive influence, and are deadly to all national patriotism. Ferdinando then asked only, that the name and greatness of his family should be perpetuated by a regular duly born heir to his eldest brother. And the death of the little Filippo was to him a misfortune of the most fatal kind. For now again the danger that the wretched purchased base–born brat they called Antonio, might become the successor to all the honours, wealth, and greatness of the extinct Medici, became imminent. And the idea was utterly intolerable. Rather than that ... anything, that might be necessary to prevent it! [Sidenote: DON ANTONIO.] The conduct of Francesco with reference to Don Antonio after Filippo's death was such as to justify in the strongest manner the Cardinal's misgivings and suspicions respecting his brother's, and more especially Bianca's intentions concerning him. The estates settled on him were increased to the value of sixty thousand scudi a year. A magnificent villa, and grand palace in the city were prepared for his use. Worse still, Francesco had obtained from the king of Spain that the estates purchased for this fortunate youth in the kingdom of Naples should be erected into a principality. And Don Antonio accordingly, now took the style and title of a Prince, and assumed palpably the next place after the sovereign in the eyes of the Florentines.