On the following morning, after the whole company had assisted at mass in the church of the convent, they all moved along the pleasant woodland path leading to the summit of the mountain ridge, past the little group of dwellings and gardens, the place where, according to the legend, the saint had a dream which led him to change his black Benedictine robe for the white one which continued to be worn at Camaldoli, as it is represented in Andrea Sacchi’s fine picture at the Vatican. We know not whether the travellers reached the neighbouring mountain ridge, the watershed of Italy, whence the eye looks down on Romagna and takes in the wide sweep of the far-off Adriatic. The narrator makes the company halt on the height near a spring, under the shelter of a mighty beech; a tree which, defying the mountain storms, overtops all other trees on the Apennines, whose brow it adorns here in the midst of fine pasture lands. Here Leon Battista, again taking the lead in the conversation, dilated on the good effects of retirement and meditation on the mind of the statesman and the scholar, and showed that only when the mind is set free from contact with the individual does it become capable of embracing the whole. Then turning to the two young men the speaker reminded them that their father’s failing health would probably soon call them to the guidance of state affairs, which, he said, were already in some degree entrusted to their care. After a somewhat extravagant eulogium of Lorenzo’s qualities, his courage, prudence, and moderation, Alberti continued to set forth how, notwithstanding such qualities and the moderate bearing he had hitherto displayed, quiet meditation or discourse held with a confidential circle on the deepest questions of human nature could not but be beneficial to the community. When the learned man thus adopted the Platonic principle, according to which complete abstinence from worldly pursuits brings our nature most surely to perfection, it would not have been difficult for Lorenzo, who was already well acquainted with this doctrine, to show that a man who practically applied and followed this principle must necessarily be brought into contradiction with his duties as a citizen; whereas the two phases of our nature—the active and the contemplative life—not divided, but united and balancing each other, lead to the true fulfilment of the purpose of existence.