"Varchi's character as an historian cannot but suffer greatly from his having given it insertion on such authority. The responsibility of an author for the truth of what he relates should render us very cautious of giving credit to the writers of memoirs not intended to see the light till a distant period. The credibility of Vergerius, as an acknowledged libeller of Pope Paul III. and his family, appears still more conclusively from his article in Bayle, note K." It must be added, that the calumny of Vergerius may be found in Wolfius's Lect. Mem. ii. 691, in a tract _de Idolo Lauretano_, published 1556. Varchi is more particular in his details of this monstrous tale. Vergerius's libels, universally read at the time though they were collected afterwards, are now not to be met with, even in public libraries. Whether there was any truth in the story of Peter Lewis Farnese I know not; but crimes of as monstrous a dye occur in the authentic Guicciardini. The story is not yet forgotten, since in the last edition of Haym's _Biblioteca Italiana_, the best edition is marked as that which at p. 639 contains "_la sceleratezza di Pier Lewis Farnese_." I am of opinion that Varchi believed the story, by the solemnity of his proposition. Whatever be its truth, the historian's feeling was elevated and intrepid. [114] Rapin. OF PALACES BUILT BY MINISTERS. Our ministers and court favourites, as well as those on the Continent, practised a very impolitical custom, and one likely to be repeated, although it has never failed to cast a popular odium on their names, exciting even the envy of their equals--in the erection of palaces for themselves, which outvied those of their sovereign; and which, to the eyes of the populace, appeared as a perpetual and insolent exhibition of what they deemed the ill-earned wages of peculation, oppression, and court-favour. We discover the seduction of this passion for ostentation, this haughty sense of their power, and this self-idolatry, even among the most prudent and the wisest of our ministers; and not one but lived to lament over this vain act of imprudence. To these ministers the noble simplicity of Pitt will ever form an admirable contrast; while his personal character, as a statesman, descends to posterity unstained by calumny.