His successor has found among ourselves a biographer[*229] who brought the enthusiasm of a eulogist to grace the more solid qualifications of a historian, whose eloquence has thrown around the era of Leo a brilliancy leaving in comparative obscurity the pontificate of Julius, whence many of its rays were virtually borrowed. But the progress of our narrative will lead us to introduce some less flattered sketches of the Medicean pontiff. In stimulating the search for choice fragments of antique sculpture, the son of Lorenzo de' Medici but followed the course which his father had indicated, and which Julius had zealously pursued. St. Peter's, perverted under him into a crowning abuse destined to wean men from their old faith, had been founded by his predecessor as the mighty temple of a church, Catholic in fact as well as in name. Michael Angelo, summoned by Julius to decorate his capital with the grandest of his efforts in architecture, sculpture, and painting, was banished by his successor to waste his energies in engineering the marble quarries of Pietra Santa. Raphael was diverted by Leo from that cycle of religious frescoes which the genius of Julius had commissioned, in order to distract his powers upon multifarious, less important, and less congenial occupations. [Footnote *229: WILLIAM ROSCOE, _Life of Leo X._, 4 vols. (3rd ed.), 1847.] Nor need we fear a comparison between these pontiffs on more important points of their respective policy. The wars of Julius were undertaken for the aggrandisement of the papacy, and his nephew was used as an instrument to that end. Those of Leo were waged for the interests of his family at the expense of the Holy See. The former is reported to have left five millions of golden ducats in the treasury; the latter unquestionably burdened it with heavy debts. The measures of Julius may have encouraged divisive courses and a schismatic council; but those of Leo matured the Reformation, and permitted a small cloud, which he might have dispersed while forming upon the horizon, to spread unheeded over the heavens, until Central Europe was withdrawn from the light and influence of the Roman church.