The house of Austria ruled it by its archdukes, and these princes of the north, transported to the palaces of the Pitti or the Como, contracted the mild and elegant manners of the Tuscans; and the climate and serenity of the hills of Florence softened there even tyranny, and these princes became voluptuaries or sages.
Florence, the city of Leo X., of philosophy, and the arts, had transformed even religion.

Catholicism, so ascetic in Spain, so gloomy in the north, so austere and literal in France, so popular at Rome, had become at Florence, under the _Medici_ and the Grecian philosophers, a species of luminous and Platonic theory, whose dogmata were only sacred symbols, and whose pomps were only pleasures that overpowered the mind and the senses.

The churches at Florence were more museums of Christ than his sanctuaries; the colonies of all the arts and trades of Greece had emigrated, on the entry of Mahomet II.

into Constantinople, to Florence, and there they had prospered; and a new Athens, enriched like the ancient with temples, porticoes, and statues, beautified the banks of the Arno.
Leopold, the philosopher prince, awaited there, busied in learning the art of governing men and putting in practice new theories of political economy, the moment to mount the imperial throne of Austria, where his destiny was not to leave him long.

He was the Germanicus of Germany, and philosophy could alone display him to the world, after having lent him for a few years to Italy.
Piedmont, whose frontiers reached to the heart of France by the Alpine valleys, and on the other side the walls of Genoa and the Austrian possessions on the Po, was governed by the house of Savoy, one of the most ancient of the royal lines in Europe.