Having thus, with great modesty, stated the motives for his choice of subject, the author presents us with a rapid sketch of the Medician family, the literary and political character of Lorenzo, and his undeserved fate as statesman and writer in the succeeding century: he then proceeds to a critical enumeration of the narratives composed of his life, from the contemporary one of Niccolo Valori to the recent volumes of Fabroni, the mass of whose valuable documents, together with the communications of a learned friend, admitted to the printed and manuscript treasure of the Laurentian library, and the acquisition of a number of scarce tracts, procured from the sales of the Crevenna and Pinelli books, arranged and concentrated by indefatigable assiduity, he considers as the basis on which he was enabled to erect his own system, and to fill up the chasm that had hitherto separated from legitimate history, the period elapsed between the last stage of decay and final dissolution of the Byzantine empire by Mahommed II. and the brilliant epoch that rose with the accession of Charles the Fifth to the German throne. The first chapter opens with Florence, its origin, its tempestuous though not improsperous liberty during the political schism of its citizens into the two factions of Ghibelines and Guelphs, or Bianchi and Neri, subsiding at length under the levelling preponderance of the Medicean family, whose annals our author traces from the real or romantic date of Charlemagne to the accession of Cosmo, emphatically decorated with the appellation of _Pater Patriæ_, and the height of its commercial and political influence.