and a chief executive officer, called the Gonfaliere. Under this establishment, the citizens imagined they enjoyed the full exercise of their liberties. But, in reality, the Medici, acting apparently in harmony with the Constitution, and working under the sanction of republican forms, names, and offices, and ever seeming to defer to public opinion, drew into their own hands, without fluttering or alarming the citizens, the reins of personal government.[24] It is even so with ourselves. The political transfer has taken place in an opposite direction to those which have just been alluded to. But though, in those instances, the tendency was towards the concentration of power, and in ours towards its diffusion, yet they closely resemble each other in that discreet preservation of ancient forms and legal nomenclature which intercepts a veil between the eyes of society and its real position. For the splendours of the royal court are as imposing and attractive as ever. People still talk complacently of royal prerogatives, the hereditary peerage, the House of Lords, and the many shadowy forms of ancient administration. The barriers and landmarks of fashionable society are but slightly altered. To the superficial observer, society presents a picture differing very little from that of earlier times. There are still some Sir Leicester Dedlocks, who live in the contemplation of their family greatness, and some Sir Roger de Coverleys, who sway their neighbourhoods with unresisted authority; and there are thousands of Englishmen who are constitutionally averse to the recognition of distasteful facts. Some persons refuse to perceive that children have become adults, and that they themselves are growing old and weak; and some do not choose to perceive that, despite the ancient names and forms of government, the constitution has been so completely re-cast that we seem destined to live for a time under the reign and influence of democracy.