[An Italian reformer, a member of the Dominican order of monks, born 1452, executed 1498. His fervid eloquence as a preacher, and his fierce denunciation of the vice and corruption of the Italian Renaissance speedily made Savonarola a power to be reckoned with in Florentine affairs. After the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the prophet’s activity extended to political as well as religious ideals, and he preached an austere theocratic republic and the deposition of the Pope. The return of the Medici family to power was the downfall of Savonarola’s hopes; and he and two of his companion reformers were strangled and their bodies burned.] We now visit San Gemignano in order to study some fading frescoes of Gozzoli and Ghirlandajo, or else for the sake of its strange feudal towers, tall pillows of brown stone, crowded together within the narrow circle of the town walls. Very beautiful is the prospect from these ramparts on a spring morning, when the song of nightingales and the scent of acacia flowers ascend together from the groves upon the slopes beneath. The gray Tuscan landscape for scores and scores of miles all round melts into blueness, like the blueness of the sky, flecked here and there with wandering cloud-shadows. Let those who pace the grass-grown streets of the hushed city remember that here the first flash of authentic genius kindled in Savonarola’s soul. Here for the first time he prophesied, “The Church will be scourged, then regenerated, and this quickly.” These are the celebrated three conclusions, the three points to which Savonarola in all his prophetic utterances adhered.