of Pope Gregory XIII. From his descendants, the Princes of Piombino, that fief passed, about the end of last century, to the Neapolitan government; and its picturesque baronial towers at Isola, once the scene of their festive revels, are now degraded into a woollen factory. The Cardinal left two natural sons, who were both legitimated by Pius V.:-- 1. Ippolito della Rovere, who had from his father San Lorenzo and Castel Leone above Sinigaglia, and was made Marquis of San Lorenzo in 1584, on his marriage with Isabella, daughter of Giacomo Vitelli dell'Amatrice, with 30,000 scudi of dowry. He had issue, 1. Giulio, who was disinherited for bad conduct; 2. Livia, born 1585, who became Duchess of Urbino in 1599; 3. Lucrezia, who married the Marchese Marc Antonio Lanti, and had issue. 2. Giuliano, Prior of Corinaldo, and Abbot of San Lorenzo. BOOK SEVENTH OF GUIDOBALDO DELLA ROVERE FIFTH DUKE OF URBINO CHAPTER XLII Succession of Duke Guidobaldo II.--He loses Camerino and the Prefecture of Rome--The altered state of Italy--Death of Duchess Giulia--The Duke's remarriage--Affairs of the Farnesi. The course of our narrative seems to offer a not altogether fanciful analogy to that of the Tiber. Issuing from the rugged Apennines, this, with puny rill, is gradually recruited from their many valleys until it has gained the force and energy of a brawling torrent, and has absorbed a goodly portion of the Umbrian waters. So, too, the former has brought us past scenes of martial prowess and creations of mediæval policy. It has afforded us glimpses of townships where civil institutions revived, and letters were cherished, the petty capitals from whose courts civilisation was diffused. Carrying us across the blood-watered and time-defaced Campagna, it has conducted us to Rome at the moment of her lamentable sack by barbarian hordes. Henceforward our history, like the river, will decline in interest. The sluggish and turbid stream has little to enliven that dreary and degenerate land through which it must still conduct us. This contrast will be especially irksome in the life of Duke Guidobaldo II., who kept much aloof from the few events of stirring interest which then occurred in the Peninsula. We shall therefore hasten over it, in the hope that those who favour us with their company may find, in the incidents of his successor, a somewhat renovated interest, and may be gratified to learn by what means our mountain duchy came to be finally absorbed in the papal dominions, just as the tawny river is lost in the pathless sea. [Illustration: FACSIMILES OF SIGNATURES] * * * * *