The second day after his death, although I, Lorenzo, was very young, being twenty years of age, the principal men of the city and of the State came to us in our house to condole with us on our loss and to encourage me to take charge of the city and of the State, as my grandfather and my father had done. This I did, though on account of my youth and the great responsibility and perils arising therefrom, with great reluctance, solely for the safety of our friends and of our possessions. For it is ill living in Florence for the rich unless they rule the State. Till now we have succeeded with honour and renown, which I attribute not to prudence but to the grace of God and the good conduct of my predecessors. I find that from 1434 till now we have spent large sums of money, as appear in a small quarto note-book of the said year to the end of 1471. Incredible are the sums written down. They amount to 663,755 florins for alms, buildings, and taxes, let alone other expenses. But I do not regret this, for though many would consider it better to have a part of that sum in their purse, I consider that it gave great honour to our State, and I think the money was well expended, and am well pleased. In the month of September 1471 I was elected to go as ambassador for the coronation of Pope Sixtus, and was treated with great honour. I brought back the two antique marble heads, portraits of Augustus and Agrippa, given to me by the said Pope Sixtus, and also our cup of chalcedony incised, and many other cameos which I then bought. The following adjunct is written on the fly-leaf of a small codex in the archive in Florence without any date, but probably in 1483-5, containing a list of letters written by Lorenzo to various people, and above is written _Ricordi di Lorenzo de’ Medici_. All the first part is in a codex in the Nazionale Library, a copy of Lorenzo’s _Ricordi_, the original of which seems no longer to exist. It differs somewhat from the version given by Roscoe, which he says was in Lorenzo’s own handwriting.