Such were the literary tendencies which, notwithstanding the rivalry of other cities, had their chief centre and focus at Florence; such was the circle of men which had gathered together in this city. Vacant places were soon filled up again. Like Lorenzo himself, several of the most prominent were in the prime of life, and younger men began to make good their claims. Such were Marcello Virgilio Adriani, who, after Scala’s death, restored the chancellorship to its pristine glory, and Bernardo Dovizj, who grew up in the house of the Medici, and afterwards gained a worldwide reputation as Cardinal of Bibiena. Whatever personal divergences there might be in the group, Lorenzo held them all together: all did homage to him, all acknowledged him as their leader. It was no cringing homage to a mighty lord; many of those who stood nearest to him gained little in worldly goods by their position, and others were too high and independent to need his help. It was the homage due to a richly endowed mind with noble aims and endeavours. Regardless of all inequalities of rank and position, freedom and ease reigned in this circle. When the meetings were academical, they were free from the formality which afterwards crept into academical life. Lorenzo de’ Medici, cheerful and sociable, maintained unconstrained intercourse with his literary friends. He received them everywhere: in the house in Via Larga, in the garden of San Marco, in the villas at Careggi and Poggio a Cajano. The more intimate of them accompanied him also when he went to the baths or to Pisa, or when he paced the convent cloisters in serious discourse with the clergy. The Platonic Academy, an inheritance from his grandfather, was only one manifestation of this multiform social life. It was so strangely composed that it is not surprising the Platonists sometimes fell into very un-Platonic ways. There is something half comic about a letter of Landino’s dated 1464, the year Cosimo died;[115] it is a petition on behalf of the herald of the Priory Palace, who had been dismissed from his post for keeping a girl hidden two days in his room. He solicits pardon upon the following pleas: his wife was expecting her confinement, he had two little daughters and an aged mother, and was a member of the Platonic Academy.