Neither in Tuscany, where the seeds of the Medicean tyranny were already springing up; not in Lombardy, which was the battle-ground of the two opposing factions; not in the kingdom of Naples tossed like a foot-ball from one master to another, but at the moment in the grasp of Cæsar. Finally, not in Rome where the Spanish government, in its war to the death upon the spirit of civil and religious liberty, found a swift accomplice in the Papal court which employed the zeal and devotion of its inquisitors in consigning to the flames both books and their authors. It is enough that no writer in Italy was permitted to answer the blind devotee of Rome, Baronius. A few noble spirits arose to tell the truth of the Austro-Spanish power; such as Bandello, Ariosto, Boccalini and Tassoni; nevertheless in the period between Charles V. and the middle of the 17th century no true light of history shone on the Peninsula. Learned and literary men lived in the courts, then the only dispensers of fame, and writers were more valued for their promptness in serving masters than for their mental acquirements. Even the best writers exhausted their ambition in the chase for courtly favour. It is not true that the protection of princes was useful to letters and arts; it only seduced them from the path of duty. Truth was banished from books because it displeased our masters, and history was sure to be smothered if it contained more than panegyric. Spanish wordiness had corrupted liberal studies and Italians were no longer honestly indignant against the oppressors of their country. They descended from employing their imaginations in intellectual creations to pandering to the senses. Literary entertainments, like falcons and buffoons, served for the sport of courtiers, as an instrument of corruption rather than a stimulant to generous pursuits. Intellect being thus prostrated, Fieschi could find no historian courageous enough to clear away the falsehoods that blackened his fame and constrain his calumniators to an honest confession. Cybo, Farnese, and whoever else, following the footsteps of Fieschi, opposed at the price of their lives Spanish influence, shared the historical misfortune of the Count of Lavagna.