connexion with a family which had usurped the entire command of the state, the sole disposal of the magistracies, could have been dissolved at any time; or indeed that it could ever have been dissolved, except by force of arms: and the praise of moderation, however applicable to the two elder Medici, is scarcely due to Lorenzo, who abolished even the shadow of a popular magistracy, and asserted the dependence of all functionaries upon himself,[181] whose expenditure was upon a scale of regal extravagance, and who made his country bankrupt to prevent the bankruptcy of his house. For he carried on the vast commercial establishment by which his grandfather Cosmo had acquired wealth; but with such different success, that he was compelled to debase the national currency to raise means for meeting his mercantile engagements. Cosmo, resembling Pisistratus in the elegance of his taste, lived, like him, at a time which enabled him to confer singular benefits upon society. To the Athenian we probably owe the preservation of Homer’s poems in a connected form; to the Florentine and to his family we are mainly indebted for those treasures of ancient literature which time has spared; which, four centuries ago, were rapidly decaying in obscurity, or, by a more ignoble fate, were defaced to make room for lying legends and scholastic quibbles, until, early in the fifteenth century, a few enlightened spirits eagerly devoted themselves to rescuing what still remained. The vast wealth of Cosmo and his extensive correspondence were ever ready to be employed in the service of learning; at the request of the men of letters, by whom he loved to be surrounded, his agents were continually charged to buy or to have copied whatever manuscripts could be found in Europe or Asia; he founded public libraries, and among them that which is still named after his grandson, the Laurentian, and supported the cause of literature by affording countenance to all who cultivated it with success. His mansions were filled with gems, statues, and paintings, the master–pieces of ancient and modern art, and he was the friend no less than the protector of Donatello and Masaccio, to whom sculpture and painting respectively are much indebted for their rapid advance. Nor was he so much absorbed by these tastes, or by affairs of state, as to neglect his domestic concerns, and the flourishing condition of his estates of Careggi and Caffagiuolo bore witness to his skill and attention to agriculture, as did his foreign dealings to his mercantile knowledge and success.