medallion of the lady of Imola in her more matronly years, whose descendants still subsist in various princely houses, and in the noble family of Riario Sforza at Naples. This much of a heroine who will reappear at intervals in our pages. The adhesion of Sixtus to the treaty which closed the Tuscan war was partly extorted by his terror of the Turks, whose progress in Europe, as yet, had met with no decided reverse. The energy and skill of Loredano had, indeed, kept them in check during the campaigns of 1474-5, but Venice found herself exhausted by efforts which, although of vital moment to Christianity, she was left to make single-handed. The following year was one of comparative repose, till in 1477, the Infidels, bursting those ramparts along the Isonzo by which the Republic considered her territories secured, scoured the rich plains of Friuli, and burned the mainland palaces of her citizens within sight of the capital. During 1478 Troia fell, and Scutari suffered a long and hopeless siege, whilst Sixtus was wasting in the Tuscan war those energies which, as head of the Church, he might have easily united against the victorious Crescent. After vainly protesting, and threatening the Pontiff with a general council, the Signory, in January, 1479, concluded with Mahomet II. a disastrous peace, at the sacrifice of all their recent conquests in the East. The Venetians were now justly incensed at the Pope and Ferdinand, who had not only refused them aid in defending Western Europe from Turkish inroads, but had effectually prevented Florence from contributing its contingent for that purpose. With the King there was a further cause of quarrel, as he had concluded a treaty with the Sultan in the spring of 1478, recognising conquests wrested by him from their Republic. Renouncing the tardy and uncertain remedy of a general council, they sought more summary vengeance by inviting Mahomet to invade Lower Italy, and when, after a siege of thirteen days, the Crescent waved over the walls of Otranto, they so successfully diverted suspicions of this anti-Italian policy from themselves to his Holiness, that Ferdinand threatened to throw open to the Infidel a passage to Rome. The panic which now spread throughout Italy, and this imminent peril of the Holy See, at length forced the Pontiff to merge selfish considerations, and to make an effort in the common cause. Bulls exhorting all Christian princes to unity, were followed by diplomatic arrangements with the powers of Italy; and Sismondi is probably correct in ascribing to the terror of this crisis the Pope's tardy absolution of the Medici and their adherents, which we have already mentioned, and which was accompanied with a condition that Florence should send a fleet to the rescue of Otranto.