A Decade of Italian Women

according to the authority alluded to, to be the law of nature, which rules the destinies of charming women whose charms have gone from them. Tullia appears to have chosen the latter alternative, and established herself permanently at Florence under the special protection of the pious Duchess Eleonora di Toledo. The times were changed, too, in Italy, since the days of Tullia's youth. Life in Rome, and hence in a somewhat less degree also in the other centres of the peninsula, was very different under Popes Paul IV. and Pius IV., from what it had been under Leo X., Clement VII., or Paul III. Devotion was now the mode, especially in courts. Princes had begun to understand, that the cause of despotism was bound up with that of sacerdotal tyranny; and that reform in matters ecclesiastical went hand in hand with freedom in matters secular. Popes and kings had become aware, that their fight against mankind could only be carriedon successfully by strict offensive and defensive alliance. Hence orthodox piety was one of the surest roads to court favour. And thus considerations of all sorts united in pointing out to Tullia the expediency of quitting La Bolieme, and becoming at once a respectable member of society, and a pattern of propriety. Literature, however, of a courtly sort was held in much favour at the court of Cosmo, who founded academies and kept historians in his pay, to set him and his doings before posterity in a proper point of view. Tullia, therefore, i...