And so he was transferred to Saint Mark's Monastery at Florence--the place that needed him most. Florence was the acknowledged seat of art and polite learning of all Italy, and Saint Mark's was the chief glory of the Church in Florence. Florence was prosperous and so was Saint Mark's, and have we not said that there is something in pure prosperity that taints the soul? Savonarola was sent to Saint Mark's merely as a teacher and lecturer. Bologna was full of gloom and grime--the bestiality there was untamed. Here everything was gilded, gracious and good to look upon. The cloister-walks were embowered in climbing roses, the walls decorated fresh from the brush of Fra Angelico, and the fountains in the gardens, adorned by naked cupids, sent their sparkling beads aloft to greet the sunlight. Brother Girolamo had never seen such beauty before--its gracious essence enfolded him round, and for a few short hours lifted that dead weight of abiding melancholy from his soul. When he lectured he was surprised to find many fashionable ladies in his audience: learning was evidently a fad. He saw that it was expected that he should be amusing, diverting, and incidentally, instructive. He had only one mode of preaching--this was earnest exhortation to a higher life, the life of austerity, simplicity and nearness to God, by laboring to benefit His children. He mumbled through his lecture and retired, abashed and humiliated. * * * * * It was the year Fourteen Hundred Eighty-two, and the whole world was athrill with thought and feeling. Lorenzo the Magnificent was at the very height of his power and popularity; printing-presses gave letters an impetus; art flourished; the people were dazzled by display and were dipping deep into the love of pleasure. The austerity of Christian religion had glided off by imperceptible degrees into pagan pageantry, and the song of bacchanals filled the streets at midnight. Lorenzo did for the world a great and splendid work--for one thing, he discovered Michelangelo--and the encouragement he gave to the arts made Florence the beautiful dream in stone that she is even to this day. The world needs the Lorenzos and the world needs, too, the Savonarolas--they form an Opposition of Forces that holds the balance true. Power left to itself attains a terrific impetus: a governor is needed, and it was Savonarola who tempered and tamed the excesses of the Medici. In Fourteen Hundred Eighty-three Savonarola was appointed Lenten preacher at the Church of Saint Lorenzo in Florence. His exhortations were plain, homely, blunt--his voice uncertain, and his ugly features at times inclined his fashionable auditors to unseemly smiles. When ugliness forgets itself and gives off the flash of the spirit, it becomes magnificent--takes upon itself a halo--but this was not yet to be. The orator must subdue his audience or it will subdue him.