In the time of Lorenzo de Medici, Florence was a prosperous city and a seat of learning. Machiavelli writes of Lorenzo: "The chief aim of his policy was to maintain the city in ease, the people united, and the nobles honoured. He had a marvellous liking for every man who excelled in any branch of art. He favoured the learned, as Messer Agnola da Montepulciano, Messer Cristofano Landini, and Messer Demetrio; the Greek can bear sure testimony whence it came that the Count Giovanni della Mirandola, a man almost divine, withdrew himself from all the other countries of Europe through which he had travelled, and attracted by the munificence of Lorenzo, took up his abode in Florence. In architecture, music, and poetry, he took extraordinary delight.... Never was there any man, not in Florence merely, but in all Italy, who died with such a name for prudence, or whose loss was so much mourned by his country." Machiavelli, the Florentine historian, lived for a while in retirement in the outskirts of Florence. We may gain a little insight into his character and tastes from a passage in one of his letters in which he mentions that it was his custom to repair to the tavern every afternoon, clad in rustic garments, where he played cards with a miller, a butcher and a lime-maker. In the evening he dressed himself in the clothes that he wore in town and at court, and communed with the spirits of the "illustrious dead" in the volumes of his library. Over the entrance to the Casa Guidi is the inscription: "Here wrote and died Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who, in the heart of a woman, combined the learning of a scholar and the genius of a poet. By her verse she wrought a golden ring connecting Italy and England. Grateful Florence erected this memorial in 1861." Mrs Browning passed away in the Casa Guidi just before dawn, in June 1861. Her remains lie in the beautiful grounds of the Protestant cemetery. Fierce old Walter Savage Landor lived for a time in Florence, and for a longer period in Fiesole, where the Brownings often visited him. Swinburne came just before Landor's death to see the poet. Shelley was in Florence in 1819. A son was born to him here, and he records the event in a letter to Leigh Hunt. The poet writes of the Cascine Gardens, where he loved to walk and to gaze upon the Arno. Florence seems to have impressed Shelley almost as powerfully as Rome. "Florence itself," he writes upon a first visit, "that is the Lung Arno (for I have seen no more) I think is the most beautiful city I have yet seen." With this tribute from the poet, we will begin our survey of Florence.