Cosmo is nevertheless entitled to the grateful recollections of posterity for the efficient patronage he afforded learning and the arts, though he evidently carried it to excess as a means of promoting his political designs. He was profuse of favours and pensions to all who cultivated literature or philosophy with success; he bought at enormous prices whatever manuscripts or masterpieces of art his agents could collect in Europe or Asia; he ornamented Florence and its environs with splendid palaces, churches, convents, and public libraries. He died in the seventy-fifth year of his age, just after a decree of the senate had honoured him with the title of Father of his country, which was subsequently inscribed on his tomb. Lorenzo de Medici, the subject of the present memoir, was born at Florence on the 1st of January, 1448. His father was Piero, the son and successor of Cosmo: his mother, Lucretia Tornabuoni, a lady of some repute, both as a patroness of learning and as a poetess. He had scarcely left the nursery when he acquired the first rudiments of knowledge under the care and tuition of Gentile d’Urbino, afterwards Bishop of Arezzo. Cristoforo Landino was next engaged to direct his education; and Argyropylus taught him the Greek language and the Aristotelian philosophy, whilst Marsilio Ficino instilled into his youthful mind the precepts and doctrines of Plato. The rapidity of his proficiency was equal to the celebrity of his masters, and to the indications of talent that he had given in childhood. Piero, who was prevented by a precarious state of health from attending regularly to business, rejoiced at the prospect of soon having in his own son a strenuous and trusty coadjutor; and on the death of Cosmo, the domestic education of Lorenzo being completed, he sent him to visit the principal courts of Italy, in order to initiate him into political life, and to afford him an opportunity of forming such personal connexions as might advance the interests of the family. Piero pretended to succeed to Cosmo’s authority, as if it had been a part of his patrimony; but the Florentine statesmen, who thought themselves superior to him in age, capacities, and public services, disdained to pay him the same deference they had shown the more eminent abilities of his father. Besides, Cosmo had taken especial care to conciliate the esteem and affection of his countrymen. He had never refused gifts, loans, or credit to any of the citizens, and never raised his manners or his domestic establishment above the simplicity of common life. But Piero seemed to have no regard for the feelings of others: he ruined several merchants by attempting to withdraw considerable capital from commerce; he allowed his subordinate agents to make a most profligate and corrupt monopoly of government; and he shocked the republican notions of his countrymen by seeking to marry Lorenzo into a princely family. These causes of discontent arrayed