The Medici were very clever in hunting up curiosities of literature; for their encouragement of the arts sprang less from the love of that renown which rewards liberal patronage, than from real, genuine interest in arts and letters _for their own sake_. Hence the worship of their very names among poor _literati_, to whom sympathy and appreciation are dearer than gold, though they like that too. Pity that they loved Plato better than Christ! The spirit of poetical and philosophical emulation which they kindled was accompanied by utter obtuseness to spiritual things. A keen sense of purity of language fostered no love of purity of life; there was, in fact, complete antagonism between the elegant disciples of Lorenzo and the severe followers of Savonarola and Bernardino Ochino; and if the very light that was in them was darkness, how great was that darkness! The Medici retarded rather than advanced the spirituality of their age; and in like manner, though in different proportion, their elegant biographer has thrown a false shadow on good, and a false light on evil. Of course I shall be covered with obloquy for saying this. Cardinal Ippolito received Bar Hhasdai in a cabinet adjoining the _sala di compagnía_, in which music and society-games were beguiling the tedium of the other guests. The Jew was a grand specimen of the Sephardim--he was a great deal older than he looked, his hair unbleached, and his head unbent by age. "Your name is that of a great man," said the Cardinal to him. "My descent is from him likewise," said the physician. "I am son, or, as your people would say, descendant of that Hhasdai ben Isaac who was Hagib to the second Abderrahman, and wrote the famous epistle--of which you doubtless have heard--to Joseph, King of Cozar." "No, I never heard anything about it," said Ippolito with interest. "Who was the king of Cozar?" "The Cozarim," replied Bar Hhasdai, "were Jews dwelling on the Caspian Sea. My ancestor had long heard of them without being able to communicate with them, till, from the Spanish embassy at Constantinople, he learned that some of them frequently brought furs for sale to the bazaars there. On this, he addressed an epistle to them, beginning: 'I, Bar Hhasdai ben Isaac, ben Ezra, one of the dispersed of Jerusalem, dwelling in Spain,' and so on--'Be it known to the king that the name of the land we inhabit is, in the holy language, Sepharad, but in that of the Ishmaelites, el Andalus,' &c. Bar Hhasdai despatched this epistle to the East by an envoy, who returned six months afterwards, saying he had hunted high and low for the Cozarim, without being able to find them. Their kingdom undoubtedly existed, but was quite inaccessible. Bar Hhasdai transmitted his letter afterwards, however, through two ambassadors of the Asiatic people called Gablim, who visited Cordova." "And were these Cozarim the lost tribes?" "I know not." "Where are they now?" "They are not found." "How came you Jews to settle in Spain?"