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    and unphilosophical . The cause , the provocation , the motive , circumstances , and deed itself , are utterly without proof or testimony . Benvenuto Cellini speaks of Garcia , as " a pretty , playful boy . " Judging by the portrait , which is

    extant of him , probably a few years later , there was an impassioned intellect within him which , had he lived , might have added another glory to the house of Medici . From vigorous elements alone , are great men made : it is the misdirection of such elements that leads to crime and

    desolation . Whether from the treble loss which Cosmo thus sustained , occasioning a desolation of the intellectual and moral feelings by the extreme grief it induced ; or that in addition to his grief , the causes of this desolation lay also in other more complicated passions , haunting memories , and inward questionings ; certain it is , that with the death of his sons and the Duchess , he seemed to fall away from himself . Retaining the power , as though unable from habit to relinquish the idea , he surrendered the reins of government into the hands of his son , Francesco , who succeeded him , and giving himself up to sensualities and indolence , his

    lofty and energetic character fell into unseemly rums . He never resumed the sovereignty , but died morally—the wreck of high passions , once fatally misdirected , or if directed aright , still of so fearful a class as to render him unable to recover from the rapid succession of the shocks attending the cause and the results .

    But of his noble and far-reaching mind , and of the corresponding acts which cast a mental splendour over his reigri far beyond his acquisitions in " barbaric gold , " and shed an equal radiance over the thrones of his descendants , records enough in stone , and in brass , and in the

    everrenewing minds of his country , are extant . Having spoken freely of his faults and of the melancholy change that took place in him after the sudden death of his wife and isons , De Thou says : — " Au reste il faut avoufer qu'il fit d ' abord quantite de belles actions , qui adoucirent beaucoup ce qu ' une nouvelle domination a presque toujours d ' odieux ; car il tnontra un zele ardent pour la justice ; et en punissant : avec beaucoup de severity les moeurs corrompus et la licence effr £ n £ e de la noblesse qui lui etoit suspecte , il trouva moyen de se rendre agreable au peupltf ; qui etoit iaccabl 6 par les nobles . II se declara le protecteur des gens de lettres , dans toute Tltalie ; il etablit a rise une university

    Ifameuse : ilfavorisa tous les grands peintres , les grands sculpiteurs , et les grands architectes de son terns . "—Vol . vii , p . 9 . " A contemporary writer of our own nation / ' says Mark

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    248 Cosmo de * Medici *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1837, page 248, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1830/page/58/