persevere through life in deliberately maintaining what he had discovered to be false, on the most momentous of all subjects. A complete catalogue of his works may be found at the end of the Life of Bossuet in the Biographie Universelle. The Life itself, which is obviously written by a partial friend, contains much information in a small compass. The affair of Quietism, and the contest between Bossuet and Fenelon, are minutely detailed with great accuracy in the Life of Fenelon by the Cardinal de Bausset, whose impartiality seems to have been secured by the profound veneration which he entertained for each of the combatants, though the impression left on the reader's mind is not favourable to the character of Bossuet. AMONG the genealogists who wasted their ingenuity to fabricate an imposing pedigree for Lorenzo de Medici, some pretended to derive his origin from the paladins of Charlemagne, and others to trace it to the eleventh century. But it is well ascertained that his ancestors only emerged from the inferior orders of the people of Florence in the course of the fourteenth century, when, by engaging in great commercial speculations, and by signalizing themselves as partisans of the populace of that republic, they speedily acquired considerable wealth and political importance. Giovanni di Bicci, his great grandfather, may be regarded as the first illustrious personage of the family, and as the author of that crafty system of policy, mainly founded on affability and liberality, by which his posterity sprung rapidly to overwhelming greatness. By an assiduous application to trade he made vast additions to his paternal inheritance; by flattering the passions of the lowest classes he obtained the highest dignities in the state. He died in 1428, deeply regretted by his party, and leaving two sons, Cosmo and Lorenzo, from the latter of whom descended the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Cosmo was nearly forty when he succeeded to the riches and popularity of his father; and he had not only conducted for several years a commercial establishment which held counting-houses in all the principal cities of Europe and in the Levant, but had also participated in the weightier concerns of government. The form of the Florentine constitution was then democratical: the nobility had been long excluded from the administration of the republic; and the citizens, though divided into twenty-one guilds, or corporations of arts and trades, from seven of which alone the magistracy were chosen, had, however, an equal share in the nomination of the magistrates, who were changed every two months. The lower corporations, owing principally to the manoeuvres of Salvestro de Medici, had risen in 1378 against the higher, demanding a still more complete equality, and had taken the direction of the commonwealth into their own hands; but after having raised a carder of wool to the supreme |