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    of a very delicate question , does he forget that thg illegitimacy of the predecessor , -Alesaaikhrcb w& $ p laced beyond doubt , and that even his relationship to thfr Media * was very questionable ; since M . de Sismondi has hijnaelf informed us , that the mother of Alessandro did not in fact know whether

    he was the son of the Duke of Urbino , < rf the Fope , or o $ , a certain muleteer ? The fact is not worth discussing , and indeed it is impossible to believe that M . de Sismondi could have intended to advocate the right , either of Alessandrq or Lorenzino , on mere legitimate grounds , although his perpetual epithet of the ^ usurper / ' applied to Cosmo , must lead moat readers

    to suehi an opinion . By the regular election of Cosmo , as we have shown—the authorities being Benedetto Var ^ eta , Thtianus * > Ammirato , Galluzzi , and others -r there can be no justice in the gratuitous opprobrium of usurpation * M . de Sismondi must , therefore , be rather supposed to refer to a subsequent period , when Cosmo , having destroyed

    the name of the nominal republic , was thereby constituted a proportionately greater despot than Alessandro > who , having himself obtained power through force and treachery , amused himself by violently carrying off the wives and daughters of the Florentine citizens , under the purer form of government ?

    It is not by such arguments and historical warpings as these , that a genuine love of sound republicanism or rational liberty can be proved and promulgated . The mare clearly we perceive the steady march of evetits , all tending to the remodelling of governments upon a basis that shall accord with the feelings and intellect of the educated

    majority—national education having at the same time a direct tendency to make that majority progress into a general fiat of the given nation- *—the more certainly ought we to be convinced , and rigidly act upon the conviction * that no permanent good of any kind can result from anything short of fundamental truth . Every undue bias and all one-sided

    views / however they may seem to serve the cause , are only leading the mind astray , and perplexing as well as protracting the development and progression of the very principles ) they , would enforce . , Cosmo the . Great , commonly designated aa Cosmo the First ( being the second of that name , but the first Grand

    Duke of Tuscany ) has been subject , like all other characters who have attained the " high places' * of history , to various misrepresentations . Unfortunately for truly , great men , the misrepresentations are usually on the unfavourable side , and consequently obtain a ready credence from the general mass , to whose level they are thus reduced .

    Untitled Article

    Co $ m& de Medici . 239

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1837, page 239, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1830/page/49/