When the young Raffaelle Riario was made a cardinal, he addressed to him warnings and counsels similar to those given in a like case, fourteen years later, by Lorenzo to his son, who was departing for Rome. He reminded him that, since he owed his high rank not to his own merits, he was the more bound to justify by his manner of life the preference bestowed on him. His memorable appeal to Pope Sixtus IV. during the war of 1478[6] shows how he could combine outspokenness with reverence for the head of the Church, which the Bishop of Arezzo, a far higher dignitary than he, and Francesco Filelfo made light of. His was the frankness of a lover of truth whose soul was filled with grief for the evils which had befallen the flock, and no less for the blots which in an unhappily complicated affair had fallen on the reputation of a supreme pastor who ought to be revered for his wisdom and goodness. Like a true philosopher, Marsilio Ficino never strove after outward splendour. His income was most modest. Besides his little farm, he received from Lorenzo two benefices of which the revenue was small, as he was obliged to entrust them to curates, but which would have sufficed for his modest requirements had he not been besieged in his later years by a swarm of needy relatives. Without the aid of rich friends, the publication of his works would have been impossible. Amid the restlessness and discontent of the learned men of his time, who were rushing breathlessly after wealth and honours; amid the greediness for ecclesiastical benefices, even among those who were not priests like himself, Marsilio Ficino, contented and devoted to science, is a fine example of the realisation of those philosophic doctrines which in the case of so many were only spiritual luxuries or a means of making money. It is this that gives interest to his character and work, though his writings have lost their value except in their connection with the history of learning. Lorenzo’s attachment to him remained unchanged till his last hour; it shows itself in his poems as vividly as in his letters. ‘Write to me,’ he says in a letter addressed to him from Pisa, about 1473,[7] ‘whatever occurs to your mind, for nothing ever comes from you that is not good; you never have an unworthy thought, so that you can never write me anything that will not be useful or agreeable. What makes me long for your letters is that in them you combine elegance of expression with solidity of contents, so that in both respects they leave nothing to be desired.’ And in the philosophic poem mentioned above, on the independence of happiness from outward position, he thus describes Marsilio’s appearance, with a touch of the warm feeling that inspired Dante on meeting his master Brunetto, at the sight of the ‘dear, good, fatherly face:’