The changes in the government of the city would alone occupy a good third, so constant and complicated were they.

I should have to explain the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the Neri and the Bianchi, the Guilds and the Priors, the gonfalonieri and the podesta, the secondo popolo and the buonuomini.
Rather than do this imperfectly I have chosen to do it not at all; and the curious must resort to historians proper.

But there is at the end of the volume a table of the chief dates in Florentine and European history in the period chosen, together with births and deaths of artists and poets and other important persons, so that a bird's-eye view of the progress of affairs can be quickly gained, while in this chapter I offer an outline of the great family of rulers of Florence who made the little city an aesthetic lawgiver to the world and with whom her later fame, good or ill, is indissolubly united.

For the rest, is there not the library?
The Medici, once so powerful and stimulating, are still ever in the background of Florence as one wanders hither and thither.

They are behind many of the best pictures and most of the best statues.