gold deteriorates into copper, or even into clay, and celebrating the splendour of letters, of commerce, of the geographical discoveries of his age, does not, however, conclude in favour of progress, but of the circle, blaming those who find everything inferior in antiquity, _cum, æterna quadam lege naturæ, conversiti omnium rerum velut in orbem redire videatur, ut aqua vitia virtutibus, ignoratio scientiæ, turpe honesto consequens sit, ac tenebræ luci._ The sad, bitter, pessimistic tone which we observe among ancient historians, which sometimes bursts forth into the tragic, is also often to be met with among the historians of the Renaissance, for they saw perish many things that were very dear to them, and were constrained to tremble for those which they still enjoyed, or at least to fear for them by anticipation, certain that sooner or later they would yield their place to their contraries. And since history thus conceived does not represent progress but a circle, and is not directed by the historical law of development, but by the natural law of the circle, which gives it regularity and uniformity, it follows that the historiography of the Renaissance, like the Græco-Roman, has its end outside itself, and affords nothing but material suitable for exhortations toward the useful and the good, for various forms of pleasure or as ornament for abstract truths. Historians and theorists of history are all in agreement as to this, with the exception of such eccentrics as Patrizzi, who expressed doubts as to the utility of knowing what had happened and as to the truth itself of narratives, but ended by contradicting himself and also laying down an extrinsic end. "Each one of us can find, both on his own account and on that of the public weal, many useful documents in the knowledge of these so different and so important examples," writes Guicciardini in the proem to his History of Italy. "Hence will clearly appear, as the result of innumerable examples, the instability of things human, how harmful they are often wont to be to themselves, but ever to the people, the ill-conceived counsels of those who rule, when, having only before their eyes either vain errors or present cupidities, they are not mindful of the frequent variations of fortune, and converting the power that has been granted them for the common weal into an injury to others, they become the authors of new perturbations, either as the result of lack of prudence or of too much ambition." And Bodin holds that _non solum præsentia commode explicantur, sed etiam futura colliguntur, certissimaque rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum præcepta constantur,_ from historical narratives. Campanella thinks that history should be composed _ut sit scientiarum fundamentum sufficiens_; Vossius formulates the definition that was destined to appear for centuries in treatises: _cognitio singularium, quorum memoriam conservari utile sit ad bene beateque