In Florence, if anywhere in Italy, existed the conditions under which a republic of letters and of culture could be formed. The aristocracy of Naples indulged the semi-savage tastes of territorial _seigneurs_; the nobles of Rome delighted in feats of arms and shared their wealth with retinues of _bravi_; the great families of Umbria, Romagna, and the March followed the profession of _condottieri_; the Lombards were downtrodden by their Despots and deprived of individual freedom; the Genoese developed into little better than traders and sea-robbers; the Sienese, divided by the factions of their _Monti_, had small leisure or common public feeling left for study. Florence meanwhile could boast a population of burghers noble by taste and culture, owing less to ancestry than to personal eminence, devoting their energies to civic ambition worthy of the Romans, and to mental activity which reminds us of the ancient Greeks. Between the people and this aristocracy of wealth and intellect there was at Florence no division like that which separated the Venetian _gentiluomini_ from the _cittadini_. The so-called _nobili_ and _popolani_ did not, as in Venice, form a caste apart, bound to the service of a tyrannous state-system. The very mobility which proved the ultimate source of disruption and of ruin to the commonwealth, aided the intellectual development of Florence. Stagnation and oppression were alike unknown. Here, therefore, and here alone, was created a public capable instinctively of comprehending what is beautiful in art and humane in letters, a race of craftsmen and of scholars who knew that their labours could not fail to be appreciated, and a class of patrons who sought no better bestowal of their wealth than on those arts and sciences which dignify the life of man. The Florentines, moreover, as a nation, were animated with the strongest sense of the greatness and the splendour of Florence. Like the Athenians of old, they had no warmer passion than their love for their city. However much we may deplore the rancorous dissensions which from time to time split up the commonwealth into parties, the remorseless foreign policy which destroyed Pisa, the political meanness of the Medici, and the base egotism of the _ottimati_, the fact remains that, æsthetically and intellectually, Florence was 'a city glorious,' a realised ideal of culture and humanity for all the rest of Italy, and, through Italian influence in general, for modern Europe and for us.