Internal struggles ceased: her foreign lord removed their causes and curbed national ambitions.

Popular revolutions ceased: her foreign lord bitted and bridled the population of her provinces.

Of bravi, highwaymen, vulgar acts of vengeance, tragedies among nobles and princes, we find indeed abundance; but these affected the mass of the people to no serious extent.

The Italians enjoyed life, indulged in the sweets of leisure, the sweets of vice, the sweets of making love and dangling after women.

From the camp and the council-chamber, where they had formerly been bred, the nobles passed into petty courts and moldered in a multitude of little capitals.