JOHN GASTON. -(1671-1737.)

While heir-presumptive the last of the Medici showed great intelligence, and much was to be expected from him. He was kind, generous, very fond of study, and in other respects richly endowed by nature. Always associating with men of learning and great attainments, he studied many branches of literature, among his most intimate friends being Benedetto Brasciani, Giuseppe Averani, Enrico Noris, Lorenzini, Father Salvini, and Magliabecchi, the founder of the Uffizi library. He spoke German, French, Spanish, and English, and was a master of several dead languages. Fond of bodily exercises, he was a fine horseman and a practised tilter; and he was also a good musician and an accomplished draughtsman.

This is the stuff of which a good sovereign is made, but his father, who had no great affection for him, styled him " the learned doctor of the Medici family." The coldness which had always been shown him in his youth kept him away from Florence, and his marriage with the daughter of Philip of Neuburg so changed his character and tastes that those of his compatriots who came to see him could not recognize in him the brilliant young prince who had been the hope of the Tuscan crown. He gradually lapsed into habits of indolence and vice, and his Court fell beneath the influence of abject creatures, in whose society he lost all sense of the responsibilities of his rank and station.

Having left his wife in Bohemia and returned to Florence, where be received an allowance in keeping with his rank, he did not attempt to maintain appearances or to stand on etiquette, becoming a tool in the hands of his valet, Giuliano Dami. This was his mode of life when he was called on to succeed his father, and be made no change, allowing his favorite to govern him. He was good-natured, but it was the good-nature of indolence rather than of temperament; and he remained shut up in his palace, where he passed his time in sensual indulgence.

Holding entirely aloof from affairs of State, his subjects did not even know him by sight ; and those who wished to have an audience of him were obliged to suborn his valet. During the fourteen years of his reign he was not present more than two or three at the Ministerial Council. This being the case, the head of each administration was supreme in his own department, and, strange to say, the affairs of Florence were not any the worse managed during this period.

As John Gaston's habits and pleasures were inexpensive, the royal treasury began to fill very rapidly. In one of his lucid intervals this prince insisted upon a reduction of the public debt and of the taxation which fell so heavily upon the people. Upon another occasion, prompted by good advice, and perhaps in some measure by his early instincts, he determined to employ the surplus arising from his disuse of the etiquette and ceremonial which were formerly maintained, in enriching the public collections with valuable jewels, pictures, statuary, and works of art of every description. His sister, Anna Maria, the widow of the Elector, after her return to Florence in 1717, also gave all her pictures of the Flemish school to the Uffizi Museum, and by her will, dated April 5, 1739, she bequeathed all the statues, pictures, and curiosities which belonged to her as sole and legitimate heiress of the Medici family, to Florence, having previously made a special agreement (October 31, 1737) to this effect.

Gaston also founded several almshouses for the poor, and gave away money very freely, so that if his reign was not a very brilliant one, it may at least be said that he possessed some of the qualities which one expects to find in a prince. He was a queer mixture of virtue and vice, but at his death the people remembered only his goodness and the generous use which he made of the money that might have been spent upon pomp and show.

His death occurred on the 9th of July, 1737, and was followed soon after by that of his sister, the grand ducal throne falling to the Lorraine branch of the Hapsburgs. The last of the Medici was dead, the family which during three centuries had given Tuscany so many great politicians and a few crowned monsters, was extinct. The first of them were the most illustrious, giving to their century the title of " The Age of the Medici." It may be said of them that they crushed liberty and claimed power as a right ; but at all events they did much to compensate for their usurpation. The great period of Florentine history is over, and the narrative might even have stopped short at the death of Michael Angelo, but it was as well to follow to its decline the Medici family.

The eighteenth century is almost a part of contemporary history, and during this time Florence enjoyed comparative prosperity under the Lorraine dynasty, though the days of bold initiative were over. No fresh monument was added to the list, but much was done in the way of embellishment and improvement. The muse had folded her wings, and the love of ease militated against the birth of any new genius. The Florentine people preserved, however, their respect for the past, and were not incapable of admiring the capi d'opere on the Piazza Bella Signoria. In relating, as I have done, the story of Florence from the first of the Medici down to John Gaston, we get a general knowledge of how the city came to hold so high a place in history. Much might be said about modern Florence as well, but this is not the place for such a study, dealing as I am with the art of past ages. Before considering which, however, I will endeavor to show how it was that Florence be, came the cradle of the Renaissance.