improvement, but only to extract the greatest possible amount of its produce from the unhappy land, whose scourged and arid soil will be unable to yield more than very barren crops to succeeding occupants.... The more hateful and abhorred they find themselves, the more merciless do they become; and dragging their hats over their brows, they look no one in the face. They glean all sorts of corn into their sheaves, intent wholly upon their own interests, without the smallest regard to the public." By the end of the century, matters had become worse, the country being "depopulated and uncultivated, ruined by extortions, and destitute of industry." The duchy of Urbino, which, according to the preceding extract, was the last refuge of the silk trade, had then fallen into deep decay, and the corn commerce of La Marca was clogged by export dues and injudicious restrictions.[130] [Footnote 130: The state of feeling in the duchy, even under the comparatively beneficent sway of its native pope, Clement XI., may be inferred from an incident of trifling moment. Having obtained trace of a petition or remonstrance addressed to that Pontiff among the MSS. of the Bibliotheca Borbonica at Naples, I was refused a sight of it by the Archbishop then at the head of that library, on the ground of its injurious allegations against the authorities. Verily such overcaution may defeat its own end, by leaving an exaggerated impression of the mischief it would veil. So Gergorovius was turned out of the Vatican Library.] [Illustration: _Anderson_ VITTORIA DELLA ROVERE, GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY _From the picture by Sustermans in the Pitti Gallery, Florence_]