Not many years passed before the Corsini and the Medici became partners in a great banking firm in Rome, chiefly managed by Filippo Corsini who had been created Marchese of Sismano, Casigliano and Civitella by the Grand Duke Ferdinando II. Filippo was an intimate friend of Pope Urban VIII, with whom he was connected by his marriage with Maria Macchiavelli, a considerable heiress. Their eldest son Bartolomeo, brought up at the Tuscan court, was after the death of Ferdinando made Master of the Household to his widow Vittoria della Rovere. The second son Neri was a cardinal, and his moderation, prudence and good sense was of infinite service to the Holy See on two different occasions—when Avignon and when Ferrara revolted against the priestly rule. Filippo their nephew, was the companion and friend of Cosimo, son of the Grand Duke Ferdinando II, and the interesting account, now in the Laurentian Library, of the Prince’s visits to Oxford, Cambridge and many towns and country houses in England, was written by him and illustrated by P. M. Baldi. A member of most of the Academies of that day, he contributed largely to the cost of publishing the fourth edition of the Della Crusca dictionary. Lorenzo, his younger brother, became a cardinal in 1706 and twenty-four years later, when seventy-eight years of age and nearly blind, was elected Pope. It is related that when hailed as Clemente XII, he knelt down and begged the Consistory to allow an old blind man to die in peace; but they insisted, and Lorenzo Corsini unwillingly accepted. His first care was to put the finances in order and to dismiss Cardinal Coscia, the venal favourite of his predecessor Benedict XIII. He reformed the administration of justice, and ordered an emission of new coinage to replace the debased currency of former Popes. The magnificent gallery of the Campidoglio was founded by him; he built the fountain of Trevi, several churches, the façades of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini and of San Giovanni in Laterano, and restored the Vatican. But much of this was done with money derived from the abominable _Giuoco del Lotto_—“esterminio e ruina de’ popoli,” as the Venetian Ambassador Mocenigo calls it—which had been prohibited by Benedict XIII, and was restored by Clemente under the specious pretext that his subjects would spend their money in gambling outside the papal dominions if they were debarred from gambling at home. On his accession to the Papacy he summoned his two nephews, Bartolomeo and Neri, to Rome. The former was created Prince of Sismano, Duke of Casigliano and Captain-General of the Papal Guards. Tempted by Charles III, who held out hopes that Spain would renounce her claims on Parma and Tuscany in his favour if he aided her to secure the kingdom of Naples, he identified himself entirely with the Spanish party, only to find his ambitious plans absolutely ignored by the Congress of Vienna. As some consolation he was appointed Viceroy of Sicily in 1737 and a Grandee of