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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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his atrocities and crimes to posterity . It was | he opinion Mt ^ Cdi&nxj V 8 s an ^ client rhateV of ][> oi ^^ % ^ $ it he" used' them upon his enemies , and it is Certain that he tried to use them upon the Strozzi ; but it is equally certain they had endeavoured to use them upon him . "—vol . ii , p . 185 .
In certain times and among certain people , things of serious and vital import are managed with a . moral composure , scarcely comprehensible by other people in other times . * X he assassin Lorenzino—the second Brutus in the opinion of many , and some of them the most enlightened men of the age—was constantly pursued by the emissaries of Cosmo , and their swords eventually reached him in .
Rome . The two soldiers who killed him , refused to accept the reward thafc Cosmo had set upon his head . The noble and stern-minded republican , Filippo Strozzi , was seized and cast into a dungeon , where he destroyed himself , having engraved these terrible words upon a stone with the point of his dagger : — t € Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibiis ultor" It was reported that Cosmo had previously
intended to have subjected him to the torture . M . de Sismondi states the intention positively . These questions should either be met fairly , or not started . There is no proof that he absolutely intended it . Still , be it admitted the act might have been regarded as a duty forming part of the fulfilment of a solemn , however barbarous , pledge
of revenge . Cosmo always spoke of Filippo Strozzi with respect . Impressed by a similar feeling , Strozzi , under opposite circumstances and apart from political animositjjr , might have tortured Cosmo , and ever after spoken of hith with tfie greatest respect . Such were the times ; such were the men : the historian should fairly estimate both .
Among the scandalous reports that were occasionally circulated by the enemies of Cosmo , there was one , originated by the ungrateful Vasari , which , to the honour of M . < Ie Sismondi , is not added to his other charges , nor dofes lie make any mention of it . The whole affair : —how Vasaft ,
* It is not intended , by any complimentary inference , to place England as a reproving moralist over such deeds . In the same age the rack ( now wisely changed into the tread-mill ) was continually at work in the Tower , during the reign of Henry 8 th and Elizabeth . In the reign of James I the torture was still used , and in proof thereof , the fac-sirnile of the agonized autograph of Guido Fawkes , written with his shattered hand , ia presented to us in the Benny Magazine , Evfn up ; to tbe end of the eighteenth century a torture of the moat horrid kind was practised in our continental dominions , especially in Osnaberg . Howard , the philanthropic , endeavoured to persuade the Duke of York , Bishop of Osnaberg , to abolish it . 4
This was promised . The Ducal Bishop , however , either forgot h , or * thought fetter of it , " and at the close of Howard ' s life he went t ^ ere again , and founjd the Srime barbarity still in active operation . Jt occasioned the philanthropist to make 6 n « of the very few expression ! ofdespondency that « ver e&tejpfed him during UH indefatigable career . « Surely / ' ejaculated he ; " we labour in vain !/ ' ' - < ¦ < >
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Cosmo deMedici . 24 $
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1837, page 243, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1830/page/53/
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