Italy and the Visconti 



money-changers were set in every city. Manufactures flourished. 

 Banks were established. The operations of the commercial machine 

 were faciHtated by many useful and beautiful inventions. We doubt 

 whether any country of Europe, our own excepted, have at the 

 present time reached so high a point of wealth and civilization as 

 some parts of Italy had attained four hundred years ago [written in 

 1827]. Historians rarely descend to those details from which alone 

 the real state of a community can be collected. Hence posterity is 

 too often deceived by the vague hyperboles of poets and rhetoricians, 

 who mistake the splendor of a court for the happiness of a people. 

 Fortunately, John Villani has given us an ample and precise account 

 of the state of Florence in the early part of the fourteenth century. 

 The revenue of the Republic amounted to three hundred thousand 

 florins ; a sum which, allowing for the depreciation of the precious 

 metals, was at least equivalent to six hundred thousand pounds ster- 

 ling: a larger sum than England and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded 

 annually to Elizabeth. The manufacture of wool alone employed two 

 hundred factories and thirty thousand workmen. The cloth annually 

 produced sold, at an average, for twelve hundred thousand florins ; a 

 sum fully equal, in exchangeable value, to two millions and a half of 

 our money. Four hundred thousand florins were annually coined. 

 Eighty banks conducted the commercial operations, not of Florence 

 only, but of all Europe. The transactions of these establishments were 

 sometimes of a magnitude which may surprise even the contem- 

 poraries of the Barings and the Rothschilds. Two houses advanced 

 to Edward the Third of England upwards of three hundred thousand 

 marks, at a time when the mark contained more silver than fifty 

 shillings of the present day, and when the value of silver was more 

 than quadruple of what it now is. The city and its environs contained 

 a hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants. In the various schools 

 about ten thousand children were taught to read ; twelve hundred 

 studied arithmetic; six hundred received a learned education. 



2. LOMBARDY AND TUSCANY IN THE FOURTEENTH 

 CENTURY 



Sismondi, Eng., thus describes the condition of Lombardy and 

 Tuscany : 



Before thus entering within the walls of the principal cities, it is 

 right to give a sketch of the general aspect of the country, particularly 

 as the violent commotions which it experienced might give a false 

 idea of its real state. This aspect was one of a prodigious prosperity, 

 which contrasted so much the more with the rest of Europe that noth- 

 ing but poverty and barbarism were to be found elsewhere. The 



