The Court is to the World, as a furnace to Gold, to purifie, and refine mens wits. Whensoever any bodies ingenuity is under a cloud, and not known, let him come to Court, for there without doubt he will be prest to an exact trial of his skill; and let him use it all in hiding himself, and drawing as it were a vayle over his designs, yet he shall find the Court to be the true Touch-stone of mens actions, and he shall be known, for what he is really, and not for what he would seem to be. This general discourse is only, that we may descend with more light and instruction to particulars. All other Courts, are streams, and rivers; but the Court of _Rome_ is the head and source of them all; and as ordinarily we find out the head by following the stream, so I thought it fit to say something in general of Courts, before I came to the description of the Court of _Rome_. Among all Nations in the World, the _Italians_ are the most famous for managing State Affairs, and being naturally inclined to be good Politicians. Neither do the Princes of the North deny this advantage to the Courts of our _Italian_ Princes, who in the Government of their States, are masters of so much conduct, and subtilty, that none but very excellent and experienced geniuses can penetrate the depth of their Counsels. But those maximes and Court slights, which in _Italy_ are ordinary, are as it were natural and inseparable from the Church-men of the Court of _Rome_; which City, upon this score, is become famous in all forreign Countries, not as a place that teaches, and instructs Church-men, but as one that is taught and perfected by them. He that desires to see politick stratagems, and all that subtilty can compass, let him not forsake _Rome_, where he shall soon learn how State Affairs ought to be managed. I alwayes had a great opinion of the cunning and abilities of Church-men in matter of Government; but when once I came to _Rome_, and began to know by experience something of their wayes, I must confess, that my imagination was far short of the reality of what I had conceived. It was no hard matter for _Rome_, both the old, and the new, to be mistress of the World, and give Lawes to Nations, since it hath alwayes been the School of true policies, as having even in its birth drained all the rest of the world of its cunning, and impoverished, it in slights to enrich its self. For the space of fifteen Ages, the Church-men have already demonstrated to the world their abilities, and subtilty; and that so much the more to the wonder of all, because their beginnings have been so different from the means they have us’d, shifting from one thing to another, and changing upon all occasions, as Seamen do their Sailes with the wind, so that they seem to be born entirely for their own profit.