of the religious duties of the time, and cultivated in him those charitable and liberal qualities by the exercise of which the house of the Medici had become so popular. In all athletic sports and exercises, especially in hunting, he became also speedily well skilled. He was especially fond of horses, and on the occasion of the present of a fine steed, he rewarded the donor so liberally that he was reproached with his extravagance, to which he answered, A horse is a kingly gift, and it is a kingly duty too not to allow oneself to be surpassed in 'generosity."

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Endowed with such qualities and attainments, Lorenzo began soon after the death of Cosimo to be employed by his father in the business of the State. As early as at seventeen years of age he was sent to Pisa to welcome the passage there of Don Federigo d'Aragona, the younger son of Ferdinand, King of Naples, then on his road to Milan to bring away the bride of his brother Alfonso, Ippolita, the daughter of Francesco Sforza. He was subsequently employed by his father in other missions, for the purpose as well of increasing his experience of human affairs as of making him acquainted with the chiefs of the various states with whom he was to hold political relations. One of such journeys to Naples proved to him in after life especially useful.

At this time also he visited Rome, entrusted with various matters of business by his father, among which especially were arrangements respecting some mines of alum farmed by the Medici, and some matters connected with the bank of which his maternal uncle Giovanni Tornabuoni was the director. Hardly had he arrived at Rome when a political event took place which agitated all Italy, and especially the house of Medici. Francesco Sforza, the last and most fortunate of the condottieri of Italy, who by craft and violence had raised himself to the throne of the Duke of Milan, and with the Medici had contracted an intimate alliance, died, and Piero was active in pressing the recognition of his son Galeazzo Maria as his successor to the dukedom, and was urgent with Lorenzo to forward the interests of the Sforzeschi at Rome.

But it was in internal matters chiefly that Lorenzo was called upon to display his activity and political wisdom during his father's lifetime; and the conspiracy set on foot by Diotisalvi Neroni and his confederates for the assassination of his father and the usurpation of his influence, was in great part defeated by the activity and foresight of Lorenzo. The last years of Cosimo had shown how difficult it was to maintain that influence over the followers of the house of Medici on which

their power was based. The spirit of rivalry and usurpation was now on the point of breaking out in some of the leading members of the party. The ambition of Luca Pitti, especially in the last years of Cosimo, had become dangerous; and Cosimo on his death-bed had warmly recommended his son to take for chief minister and confidant Diotisalvi Neroni, a man whom he supposed to be truly attached to the interests of his house. Diotisalvi Neroni was not proof against the temptations of his position. He prepared the way for a conspiracy against the life of Piero de' Medici by reommending measures which should bring the family into unpopularity. On a revision of the state of the property of the family after Cosimo's death, it was found that a large number of sums of money were outstanding as debts in the hands of merchants and other citizens of Florence-the private affairs of the family, on account of the great and politic liberality with which they were conducted. Neroni advised Piero to call in these sums of money; the prosecution of his advice caused great discontent in the capital, a good many bankruptcies took place, together with much depression of trade, and these commercial misfortunes were ascribed to the rapacious activity of Piero.

Taking advantage of this transitory state of public feeling, Neroni seduced Luca Pitti, the powerful family of the Acciaiuoli, and other associates, into a conspiracy against the Medici family, one of whose chief objects was the assassination of Piero de' Medici. The assassination of Piero, which was to have been perpetrated on his way back to Florence from his country villa at Careggi, was prevented by the astuteness of Lorenzo, who was preceding his father, and met the assassins on the road. He passed by them as though he had remarked nothing extraordinary, and then despatched a messenger by a circuitous route to inform Piero of his danger. The agents and friends of the Medici had kept them well acquainted with the design of the conspirators, and by taking advantage of such information Lorenzo was enabled to secure the defection of Luca Pitti from the conspiracy. Both parties relied upon the support of foreign troops. Neroni and his party had engaged a body of cavalry from the Marquis of Ferrara. The Medici were as fortunate in being beforehand with their enemies in the field as they were within the walls of Florence. According to the usual course of Florentine tradition, the vanquished party, with the exception of Luca Pitti, were all forced into exile, but in due constitutional fashion. A new Signoria was chosen, at the head of which was placed Roberto Leoni, a par

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tisan of the Medici. The Signoria, as was usual in such cases, in order to cover their responsibility, invited a parliament of the people in the Piazza della Signoria. The parliament appointed a balia, or temporary dictatorship. The balia declared that the heads of the late conspiracy should be sent into exile, and that, moreover, for the next few years the Signoria should not be balloted for, but named by election. Luca Pitti was excluded from the decree of banishment, but the discredit into which he fell was equal to a political ostracism at home. He was shunned universally by his fellow-citizens, and neglect and contempt were his fortune for the rest of his days. Even the masons of Florence refused to work any longer at the magnificent palace which perpetuates his name, and which, after remaining incomplete for two generations, was completed by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The mild character of Lorenzo, for which he was distinguished through life, allayed the apprehensions of the greater part of those implicated in the conspiracy, and two speeches of his at this time have been recorded by Valori, both of which made a great impression on the minds of his contemporaries. He only knows how to 'conquer who knows how to forgive,' he said on one occasion. On another, when Filippo Valori, the brother of his biographer, hesitated to introduce one of his adversaries to him, he remarked, 'I should owe you no obligation, Filippo, for introducing to me a friend; but by converting an enemy into a 'friend, you have done me a favour, which I hope you will as ' often as possible repeat.'

Soon after the suppression of this conspiracy, Lorenzo received a letter of congratulation from King Ferdinand or Ferrante of Naples, in which he thus expressed himself:- We 'were already much attached to you, on account as well of your own excellent qualities, as on account of the merits of your father and grandfather. Since, however, we have heard with what prudence and with what manly courage you have 'borne yourself in these last disturbances, and how resolutely 'you placed yourself in the front, our attachment to you is 'wonderfully increased.'

The exiled Florentines, however, were not disposed to take their fate easily. They induced the Venetians, among whom hostile feelings prevailed towards the Florentines, by reason of the support which the latter had given to the Sforzas in their conflicts with the Queen of the Adriatic, to get up a league for the purpose of making war against their native city; and they contrived also to embark in their cause the ambition of Bartolommeo Colleone, the noted condottiere of the republic,

whose majestic statue, designed in bronze by Andrea Verrochio, excites the admiration of the traveller, by the side of the church of San Giovanni e Paolo. Colleone, like all the rest of his fellow condottieri, nourished dreams of carving out with his good sword an independent state, and visions were held before him of some such a principality, to be framed out of such of the districts of Romagna as were living under the accomandigia of the Florentine republic. The cause of the exiles was also espoused by the Marquis of Ferrara, who sent a body of troops to their assistance. To this league the Florentines opposed another, in which their allies were the Duke of Milan and the King of Naples. After some indecisive hostilities, accompanied with the usual amount of plundering and burning, peace was restored.

The restoration of peace was accompanied with the usual number of barishments and deprivations of civil privileges, which the victorious parties in Florence were in the habit of lavishing upon their adversaries. It appears, however, that Piero, before his death, saw reason to regret the intolerant abuse of power exhibited by his own partisans, and was preparing at the time of his decease a way for a reconciliation with some of his enemies.

A few months before his death, Piero, through the mediation of his wife Lucrezia, who made a journey to Rome for the purpose, negotiated a marriage for her son with Clarice, a daughter of the Orsini family-those famous rivals of the Colonna in the story of Roman faction. The marriage had excited some feeling of hostility and invidious remark in Florence, since the idea of choosing a bride from among a princely and foreign race for a Florentine citizen seemed novel and ambitious. It was, however, celebrated, about six months previous to the death of Piero, in December 1469, with great splendour. Feasts, dancing, and antique representations occupied many days; at the conclusion of which, to exhibit the grandeur of the house of Medici and of the Government, two military spectacles were presented-one performed by men on horseback, who went through the evolutions of a field engagement, and the other representing the storming of a

town.

Piero de' Medici,' writes Machiavelli, left two sons, Lo'renzo and Giuliano, whose extreme youth created alarm in 'the minds of thinking men, though each gave hopes of future ' usefulness to the republic.' The Florentine historian, moreover, states that the chief power in the state was at first offered by a body of the most distinguished citizens of the city to

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Tommaso Soderini, whose prudence and authority were known not only at home, but throughout Italy. Roscoe, always sceptical as to the accuracy of the narrative of Machiavelli, and sometimes successful in correcting him, has here allowed his critical spirit to carry him too far. He concludes from the statements of the Ricordi' of Lorenzo himself, that without more ado the chief persons of the city waited upon him and offered him the chief administrations of the republic, in the same fashion in which they had been enjoyed by his grandfather and father. But we find by evidence set forth in these pages, which Roscoe did not sufficiently appreciate, that the offer to Lorenzo of the continuance to him of the administrative supremacy enjoyed by Piero, was only made after a preliminary deliberation had been held by the chief persons among the adherents of the Medici, under the direction of this same Tommaso Soderini. Soderini had already distinguished himself by his fidelity to the Medici in the case of Diotisalvi Neroni, and was perhaps the most distinguished citizen in the republic. At the death of Piero, Tommaso Soderini, who was, by his marriage with a Tornabuoni, brother-in-law of Piero, had indeed taken a leading part in the defeat of the conspiracy of 1466, which had placed in such jeopardy the ascendency of the Medici, and on his death-bed Piero recommended his two sons to the care of his brother-in-law. Nevertheless, at the death of Piero, offers were made to Tommaso to surrender to him the chief conduct of affairs. He remained, however, firm to the trust reposed in him by Piero, and immediately after the death of the latter called the leading men of Florence to a meeting in the Convent Sant Antonio, in the neighbourhood of the Porta Faenza. Six hundred of the chiefest inhabitants of the town answered the summons, and it was on the proposition of Soderini that it was resolved that the chief conduct of affairs was intrusted to the son of Piero. The kind of government to which Lorenzo thus succeeded cannot be defined better than in the words of Bernardo di Nero, one of the speakers in the dialogue of Guicciardini entitled Del Reggimento di Firenze:'

One must confess that the government of the Medici was of a kind which it is not ordinarily allowed to be, namely despotism, and that it was acquired by faction and force; and that notwithstanding that the city retained the name, the appearances, and the image of a free city, they ruled over it as masters, because they conferred the magistracies on whomsoever they would, and that those who had them were obedient to themselves. It is true, too, that their despotism, in comparison with others, was of a very mild character, for they were neither cruel nor