Republic of Venice, the ecclesiastical and civic power, then opened the way to human freedom, and Sarpi is truly exhibited as the pioneer reformer. His liberal studies, foreign friends, and independent and intrepid mind rendered him admirably fitted for the task he undertook, and the Papal government only added infamy to despotism by the baffled attempt to assassinate him. It is difficult to imagine a better introduction to the subsequent history of free thought and spiritual emancipation, which culminated in the Reformation, than this biographical sketch, where a great historical development is made clear and dramatic by the carefully told story of the lives of the two chief actors and agents therein. There is a power in the state, unofficial, but essential, and therefore more intimately blended with its welfare and identified with its fortunes than pope, emperor, or prince,--and that is the Banker. Even in modern times the life of such a financier as Lafitte is part of the social and political history of France; but in mediæval times, when "the sinews of war" and the wages of corruption so often turned the scale of ambition and success, the rich bankers of the Italian cities were among the most efficient of their social forces and fame. In writing the memoirs of Filippo Strozzi, Mr. Trollope struck the key-note of local associations in the Tuscan capital. The least observant or retrospective stranger is impressed with the sight of the massive walls and grated windows of the Strozzi Palace, and is attracted by such a monument of the past to the story of its founder. A standard drama and novel were long since made to illustrate those annals,[15] but it was reserved for an Englishman in Italy to record, in a well-digested and authentic narrative, the career of Filippo, whose immense wealth, marriage to a Medici, family ambition, scholarship, political and social distinction, enterprise, and luxury, and especially his financial relations with both rulers and ruled, make him one of those central figures of an historic group that serve as expositors of the time. He was indeed, by his accomplishments and his profligacy, his intrigues and associations, his alliances and enmities, his domestic and his political life, a representative man, whose character and career aptly embody and illustrate a most stirring era of European and Italian history. He escorted Catharine de' Medici on her bridal journey from Florence, talked philosophy at Medicean banquets, was closeted with popes and kings, was the boon companion of reigning dukes, a courtier to princes and people, a magnificent entertainer, a fugitive, exile, prisoner, sceptic, scholar, and suicide,--typifying in his life the luxury and lawlessness, the culture and the crime, the splendor and the degradation, the manners and morals, of his country and his age,--and hence a most instructive biographical study, which Mr. Trollope has treated with equal fulness, insight, and authenticity.