A justly popular life of Lorenzo [by Roscoe] was written when the knowledge of Italian history was limited and its sources confused and difficult of access. If a similar attempt is now made eighty years later, it is under altered circumstances and with expectations greatly enhanced. The supply of original materials, then very small, however skilfully arranged, has increased in our day to a degree almost beyond management. At that period the insight of the historian, not informed as to the internal politics of Florence, reached no great depth below the dazzling surface of Lorenzo’s magnificence. At the present day deep places are exposed to view which had been kept only too dark. A flood of light envelops the personality of the man who was distinguished by so many things that charm and attract. If the sum-total of his history conveys a graver impression and comes upon us with a feeling of pain, our interest in it is scarcely less keen because of the obstacles through which this brilliant spirit made its own way, or of the entanglements and dangers against which he had to struggle. Should I succeed in describing truthfully him and the surroundings from which he was never separated and without which it is difficult to imagine him, I shall have completed a thank-offering due for a past full of varied enjoyment and for many friendly aids, received during the preparation and composition of this book from the countrymen of Lorenzo de’ Medici. I am indebted to scholars and art-critics, to keepers of archives and museums, to librarians, and above all to the man whose name rendered famous by the history of his native city stands in the front of this book, which attained its present form for the most part under his roof. To him do I owe it especially that after a deep and critical change in my own life, Florence remained to me a second home. BONN: _Palm Sunday, 1874_. CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. FIRST BOOK. _FLORENCE AND THE MEDICI TO THE DEATH OF COSIMO THE ELDER._ CHAPTER I. THE HOUSE AND FAMILY OF THE MEDICI. DEVELOPMENT OF THE FLORENTINE DEMOCRACY. PAGE