To delineate Cellini will be the business of a distant chapter.

The form of the greatest of Italian preachers must occupy the foreground of the next.
[1] I have thrown into an appendix some of the principal passages from the chronicles about revivals in mediaeval Italy.
Before closing the imperfect and scattered notices collected in this chapter, it will be well to attempt some recapitulation of the points already suggested.

Without committing ourselves to the dogmatism of a theory, we are led to certain general conclusions on the subject of Italian society in the sixteenth century.

The fierce party quarrels which closed the Middle Ages had accustomed the population to violence, and this violence survived in the too frequent occurrence of brutal crimes.

The artificial sovereignty of the despots being grounded upon perfidy, it followed that guile and fraud came to be recognized in private no less than public life.