hours had been stripped of the pomp of royalty. A melancholy reflection on the vicissitudes of human greatness forced itself on his mind; and he repeated an elegant distich of Persian poetry: “The spider hath wove his web in the imperial palace; and the owl hath sung her watch-song on the towers of Afrasiab.” LORENZO DE’ MEDICI. BY JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS. [Surnamed the “Magnificent,” born 1448, died 1492. The Medici family had in the latter part of the fourteenth century become one of the most influential and powerful in the Florentine Republic. It had amassed vast wealth in the pursuits of commerce, and spent it with the munificence of the most public-spirited princes. Cosmo de’ Medici about the year 1420 became the leading man of the state, and practically exercised control over the republic, though without definite authority, as ruler. The splendor of the family culminated in his grandson Lorenzo, who for a quarter of a century held the powers of the state in the palm of his hand, and made the city of Florence the most brilliant center of literature, learning, art, and refined luxury in Europe. Though he curtailed the liberties of the people, the city reached under him the highest degree of opulence and power it had ever attained. Eminent as statesman, poet, and scholar, the enthusiastic patron of authors and artists, munificent in his endowment of schools and libraries, he was the most favorable example of the Italian tyrants of the middle ages; and his life was the source of a stream of influences which helped to revolutionize his own age and that which succeeded it.] In one point Lorenzo was inferior to his grandfather. He had no commercial talent. After suffering the banking business of the Medici to fall into disorder, he became virtually bankrupt, while his personal expenditure kept continually increasing. In order to retrieve his fortunes it was necessary for him to gain complete disposal of the public purse. This was the real object of the constitutional revolution of 1480, whereby his privy council assumed the active functions of the state. Had Lorenzo been as great in finance as in the management of men, the way might have been smoothed for his son Piero in the disastrous year of 1494.