Few authors have received greater honour for their works, or endured severer calamities on account of them, than the famous Florentine preacher Savonarola. Endowed with a marvellous eloquence, imbued with a spirit of enthusiastic patriotism and intense devotion, he inveighed against the vices of the age, the worldliness of the clergy, the selfish ease of the wealthy while the poor were crying for bread in want and sickness. The good citizens of Florence believed that he was an angel from heaven, that he had miraculous powers, could speak with God and foretell the future; and while the women of Florence cast their jewels and finery into the flames of the "bonfire of vanities," the men, inspired by the preacher's dreams of freedom, were preparing to throw off the yoke of the Medicis and proclaim a grand Florentine Republic. The revolution was accomplished, and for three years Savonarola was practically the ruler of the new state. His works were: _Commentatiuncula de Mahumetanorum secta; Triumphus crucis, sive de fidei Christianae veritate_ in four books (1497), de _Simplicitate vitae Christianae_ in five books, and _Compendium Revelationis_ (1495), and many volumes of his discourses, some of which are the rarest treasures of incunabula. [Footnote: At Venice in the library of Leo S. Olschki I have met with some of these volumes, the rarest of which is entitled:-- PREDICHE DEL REVERENDO PADRE FRATE HIERONYMO _Da Ferrara facie lanno del_. 1496 _negiorni delle feste, finito che hebbe la quaresima: & prima riposatosi circa uno mese ricomincio eldi di Scõ Michele Adi. viii di Maggio. MCCCC LXXXXVI._ The text commences "CREDITE IN Dño Deo uestro & securi eritis." In the cell of Savonarola at the Monastery of St. Mark is preserved a MS. volume of the famous preacher. The writing is very small, and must have taxed the skill of the printers in deciphering it.]