TROLLOFE'S GIRLHOOD OF CATHERINE DE' nEnrci. 4 THE object of Mr.

Trollope in his readable volume is to account for the queenly character and career of Catherine de' Medici, by exhibiting her youthful training and- the social atmosphere in which she breathed and inhaled her earliest moral notions. Un- fortunately, no materials exist to individually develop this concep- tion. We are acquainted with her parents, and the very bad character of her father ; but both parents died when Catherine was quite an infant. Respecting her first six years passed at Rome there is nothing known ; not much of the next eight-and-a-half, at the end of which she was married,—for she was born on the 18th April 1519, and was therefore rather more than fourteen years and six months when the marriage took place, on the 28th October 1533. Part of this time she passed under guardians appointed by her uncle Pope Clement, part in a democratic nunnery at Florence, and another part among some aristocratic professed. The par- ticular information as to her conduct or her mode of education is as trifling as could be. From one two or glimpses she would ap- pear to have been selfwilled, but goodnatured or at least lively, She exhibited gratitude in saving the life of a man who had treated her kindly during a civil contest in Florence, and very late in life she recurred with pleasure to the time she had passed with the aristocratic nuns. From lack of materials, Mr. Trollope is driven to speculation ; and he arrives at the conclusion that Catherine was influenced by the want of principle and of moral sense that prevailed in Italy during the early part of the sixteenth century: a conclusion doubtless true, but not one which it was necessary to write a volume to arrive at.

Catherine, however, is less a subject than a peg on which to hang pictures of the times, as exhibited in the leading characters to awn she was related by birth or fortune. The most conspi- cuous members of the Medici.. family—Leo the Tenth, Clement, the banker Strozzi, and several lesser persons—are painted, and with no flattering pencil, as well in their private habits as their public conduct. There are passing notices of Francis the First, of the Duke of Bourbon, and several other military celebrities. Charles the Fifth is exhibited more fully, as Emperor ; many of the Cardinals and literary men are allowed to exhibit themselves. The correspondence of the Venetian and English Ambassadors is drawn upon for expositions of policy-, personal sketches, and de- scriptions of the state to which civil broils and foreign invasion had reduced Italy. Historical facts form what may be called the texts of Mr. Trollope ; they are used as the base of discourses and illustrations of political and in some cases personal morality. The book has thus a substratum of history ; though its spirit and

form are social and personal. The matter is chiefly drawn from original documents or contemporary historians, and mostly in

their own words. The style is not without force and vitality, but it is dashed with strong not to say slangish terms. Mr. Trollope also falls into the common error of judging men of action and business by the opinion of our age and not of their own. From • The Girlhood of Catherine de' Medici. By T. A. Trolkpe. Published by Chap- man and Hall. the time when morality was first embodied in a religious code, there always have been abstract tests which very few indeed could come up to ; but in practice men must be judged by their own times and circumstances. The abstract touchstone is for satire and sermons, not for history or memoirs. It was one of Southey's notions, and many have adopted the opinion, that modern civilization, by connecting comfort with wealth, and separating in various ways the poor more completely from contact with the rich, has placed the mass of mankind in a worse condition than they were in during the middle ages. Medical and statistical facts do not support this view, nor such historical accounts as bear upon the subject—the estimation and treatment of " Jacques Bonhomme," for instance. Neither does the behaviour of the noble and the trading classes towards the serfs in Eastern Europe or in slaveholding countries support this idea. On the contrary, the poor were not only worse off than

i they are now, but the rich too. When wealth in all its forms was much less plentiful, and disorder and violence were the rule, men of eminent station seem on a reverse of fortune not only to have lost power and importance, but to have been subjected to personal inconveniences to which in our milder times they would only be exposed by accident or the pressure of escape. When the negotiations consequent on Bourbon's sack of Rome were going on between Charles and Clement, the Pope took advantage of the lessened vigilance to escape from the Castle of St. Angelo to Orvieto ; which was out of the frying-pan into the fire.

"One of the letters written home by Gardiner and Foxe, who had been sent to urge the Pope to annul Henry's marriage with Catherine, gives a lively picture of the condition of the city, and of the miseries of the Pope's life there. Having arrived without any clothes besides their travelling dresses-

" We were compelled,' they write, 'to tary all that day and the next within the house, whiles our garmentes was at the making ; wherin we founde very great difficulte, all thinges here being in suche a scarcite and derthe as we thinke hath not been seen in any place; and that not only in victell, which can not be brought in to the towns in any great quantitie, by reason that al thing is conveyed by asses and mules, but also in oother ne- cessaryes i so that cloth, chamblet, or such like merchaundises, which in England is worth 20s., is here worth 61., and yet not to be had in any quan- tite ; and had we not made provision for our gownes at Luke (Lucca), we must of necessite have goon in Spanish clokes such as we could have borrowed of the poope's servaunts ; wherin peradventure shuld have been found som diffi- mite, forsomoche as few men here, so farr as we can perceave, have moo garmentes than oone.'

Of Orvieto they write—' It may well be called Urbs Vetus (such is the etymology by some assigned to the name), for every man in al langages' at his entre, wolde gyve it noon other name. We came not wel tel howe the pope sholdc be noted in libertie, being here, where hunger, skarsite, it fa- vered lodging, it ayre, and many other incommodities kepe him and all his as straitly as he was ever kepe m Castle Angel. It is aligns mutacio soli, sed nulls libertatis ; and in maner the pope eowlde not deny to Mr. Gregory, but it wer better to be in captivite at Rome thenne here at libertie. The pope lieth in an olds palace of the biashopes of this city, ruynose and de- cayed, where or we cumme to his pryvey bed-chambre, we passe three cham- bres al naked and onhanged, the rofes fain downe, and, as we canne geese, thirty persons, rif raf and other, standing in the chambres for a garnishe- ment. And as for the pope's bed-chamber, al the apparel in it was not worth twenty nobles, bed and all.'

"Uneasily enough, beyond all doubt, lay the head that wore the triple crown. And we may feel very sure that not the least bitterly felt of all the humiliations of that miserable time was the presence of these ultramontane barbarian' ambassadors, to spy out the utter nakedness of the land. " In this wretched condition the humbled pontiff was obliged to continue for nearly four months."

The exposition of the secret policy of the Pope and his ad- visers shows bad enough as to the reestablishment of the Medi- clan power in Florence, as nakedly displayed in secret letters, and is severely commented on by Mr. Trollope. We do not know that it is muoh worse than in our own days. The following views of Clement and his advisers strike us as very like Austrian con- duct in Gallicia and Russian in various places. There are expo- sitions in the History of the Consulate and Empire by M. Thiers which coolly unfold projects very little if any better than those of Guicciardini and Vettori.

"The end pursued by Clement in the infliction of these sufferings on the citizens was twofold. He sought not only to avenge all past and quell all possible future opposition, but also to render those members of the aristo- cracy who were the ministers of his will so odious to their fellow citizens as to make the continuance of the Medioian rule absolutely necessary to their own safety.

" This policy was especially recommended to the Pope, and its atrocious details developed with scientific precision and unblushing cynicism, by one whose whole ‘conduct during this eventful period is humiliating to the pride of human intellect. Among all those who ranged themselves on the side of might against right in this struggle, none have transmitted to posterity a character with a deeper shade on it than Francesco Guieciardini the histo- rian. The reader of his unimpassioned pages, who has been chilled with a strange awe by the cold tones which might seem to proceed from some Faust- contrived mechanical intellect, uninformed by moral sentiment or human feeling, is pained though enlightened on finding that that which he has missed in the writer is equally wanting in the man. Of any higher law than that of expediency he seems to have been unconscious, and incapable of any larger wisdom than the vulpine sagacity which outnIncenvres cun- ning by deeper cunning, and provides against deceit by profounder deceit- fulness.

" This congenial counsellor and minister of the wily Pontiff unfolds the policy to be pursued by his Holiness in Florence, in an exceedingly curious letter to another creature of Clement's, Nicholas Sehomberg, Archbishop of Comm. It bears date January 30th 1632.

" Our friends,' he writes, are few ; but they are so situated, that if they have not altogether lost their senses they will be well aware that they cannot remain in Florence longer than the house of Medici bears rule there. * * * We have for our enemy an entire people, and the yroung more so than the old; so that we may have cause to fear for a hundred years to come. We are therefore bound to wish for any kind of measure which may secure our power, be it of what sort it may. * * * Honours and emoluments must be bestowed in such a manner that those who partake of them may become so odious to the public as to force upon them the conviction that there

can be no safety for them under a republic.' He recommends the establish. ment of a board of seventy or eighty persons, to whom should be given a stipend of a hundred and fifty or two hundred ducats yearly ; which would involve every man of them in a hatred from which they could never escape. • * • It is necessary that these payments should be made immediately from the city coffers, so as to increase as much as possible the odium attaching to the receipt of them. * * • In all things I would proceed on this maxim, that no benefit should be conferred on those who are not of our party, ex• cept to such as are necessary to us, and for the purpose of drawing from them our on profit and advantage to the utmost. All other benefits given are not only thrown away but are pernicious.'

" Francesco Vettori also, another of the leading statesmen of the time, be

writing to the same prelate on the same subject, says that the best thing would ' for Alessandro to obtain investiture from the Emperor, and assume the title as well as the power of a sovereign. But the Emperor,' he con- tinues, will not approve this, because he is a just man, and in the capita. lotion made with the city he promised to preserve its liberty.' (The ad. mission of this promise by a partisan of the Medici is very note-worthy,)

And it is possible that his Holiness also might refuse this investiture. • * *' Not from any such reason as the writer supposes might prevent Charles from acceding to such a scheme, but because, even supposing the Emperor should consent, it seems to me that the Pope would be blamed for i

so acting, by all the world. And with a council hanging over him, I do not think it would be desirable for his Holiness to incur such an opprobrium. * * * Yet it is necessary to arrive at some solution by which it may be brought about that Alessandro may be in fact master and do as he pleases, while a mere vain name of liberty remains to the city.' " There is a good deal of curious matter in the notes and ap- pendixes ; including biographical sketches with critical notices of the principal Florentine authorities, mostly contemporary, on

whom Mr. Trollope has relied for facts and the living principle which often animates them.