Leghorn, a mere fishing village of the Cinque Cento, had been raised to her position of the second seaport in Italy by this ex-cardinal, and that chiefly through the operation of an edict of toleration almost incredible at the period in which it was promulgated. When the Spanish Armada, the struggle in the Netherlands, and the religious wars in France kept all Europe in a ferment, Leghorn rose suddenly and swiftly like an exhalation of the sea through the peaceful labors of the French, Flemish, and Jewish refugees who, within her walls and under the powerful protection of her Grand Duke, the ex-cardinal, found absolute liberty of conscience and security of life and property. It was this Ferdinand who furnished from his own rich coffers the sinews of war to Henry of Navarre; it was he who mediated between Henry and the Pope; and it was his niece, Maria de’ Medici, who became Queen of France as wife of Henry IV, bringing with her, as Sully said, such a marriage portion as had never before been brought into the kingdom. Five years after this event Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici became Pope; so the Villa Medici, as well as the Church of the Trinità de’ Monti, had, in spite of their Italian names, many affiliations with far-off Paris; and partly on account of these associations, partly for the sake of the marvellous view, their terraces became the favorite haunt of those artists who, in the early days of the Sei Cento, began to find their way to Rome. In the continuity of the development of art there are few events more interesting than the appearance of the French art student in Rome. Gaul had been the first of the northern nations to assimilate Roman culture, and France was the first to come under the influence of the Renaissance. Just at the time when the Catholic reaction against the license of the Cinque Cento had begun to force Italy under the stultifying influence of Spanish domination, France awoke to the full consciousness of her æsthetic nature and to her need of those things which Italy alone could give. The army of Charles VIII had carried back across the Alps imperishable memories of beauty, and soon afterward Francis I had enticed to Paris some of the greatest Italian artists of the time. Even the fierce religious wars of the sixteenth century could not stamp out the seed sown by the soldiers’ stories and by the works of art left by homesick Italian masters in Fontainebleau. One by one the eager French artists crossed the Alps, and they came in ever-increasing numbers when the genius of Richelieu brought order and amenity into French life, and when Richelieu’s contemporary, Maffeo Barberini, for many years papal legate to France, had become Pope Urban VIII. To reach Rome all of these voyagers had to endure severe physical hardships, and some of them never returned to France. The greatest of them--Le Poussin and Claude--died in Rome. Painters, engravers, sculptors, and architects came to these terraces to worship and to