“I began,” Savonarola writes himself with reference to a course of sermons delivered in 1491--“I began publicly to expound the Revelation in our Church of St. Mark. During the course of the year I continued to develop to the Florentines these three propositions: That the Church would be renewed in our time; that before that renovation God would strike all Italy with a fearful chastisement; that these things would happen shortly.” It is by right of the foresight of a new age, contained in these three famous so-called conclusions, that Savonarola deserves to be named the Prophet of the Renaissance. He was no apostle of reform; it did not occur to him to reconstruct the creed, to dispute the discipline or to criticise the authority of the Church. He was no founder of a new order; unlike his predecessors, Dominic and Francis, he never attempted to organize a society of saints or preachers; unlike his successors, Caraffe the Theatine, and Loyola the Jesuit, he enrolled no militia for the defense of the faith, constructed no machinery for education. Starting with simple horror at the wickedness of the world, he had recourse to the old prophets. He steeped himself in Bible studies. He caught the language of Malachi and Jeremiah. He became convinced that for the wickedness of Italy a judgment was imminent. From that conclusion he rose upon the wings of faith to the belief that a new age would dawn. The originality of his intuition consisted in this, that while Italy was asleep, and no man trembled for the future, he alone felt that the stillness of the air was fraught with thunder, that its tranquillity was like that which precedes a tempest blown from the very nostrils of the God of hosts. CÆSAR BORGIA. BY CHARLES YRIARTE. [Son of Pope Alexander VI, at first prelate, then soldier and statesman, born about 1457, died 1507. All the contemporary annals concur in giving Cæsar Borgia nearly every private vice, and stamp him as murderer, sensualist, and a man of ruthless ambition. Successively made bishop and cardinal in his earlier years, he was finally secularized and became Duke of Romagna and Valentinois. After having dispossessed the rulers of many small principalities and united them into a duchy, he is believed to have nourished the scheme of founding a united Italy. After some years of vicissitudes Cæsar lost his political ascendency by the election of a pope inimical to his interests, and his military power by the jealousy of the Kings of France and Spain. A consummate soldier and politician, he showed during the short period during which he exercised the functions of a ruler all the traits of a wise, upright, and public-spirited sovereign, in shining contrast with the hideous crimes which had blackened his career as a man. Cæsar Borgia was the model on which Machiavelli drew his “Prince,” in the celebrated politico-historical treatise of that title.]