In conjunction with his patronage of printing, there was no line of effort in which Lorenzo did more real good than in collecting manuscripts and antiquities, and in making them practically public property. On this account he is styled, by Niccolo Leonicino, "Lorenzo de' Medici, the great patron of learning in this age, whose messengers are dispersed through every part of the earth for the purpose of collecting books on every science, and who has spared no expense in procuring for your use, and that of others who may devote themselves to similar studies, the materials necessary for your purpose." The agents he employed travelled through Italy, Greece, Europe, and the East--Hieronymo Donato, Ermolao Barbaro, and Paolo Cortesi being the names of some of his most trusted "commissioners." But the coadjutor whose aid he principally relied on, to whom he committed the care and arrangement of his vast museum and great library, was Poliziano, who himself made frequent excursions throughout Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa to discover and purchase such remains of antiquity as suited the purposes of his patron. Another successful agent, though at a later date, was Giovanni Lascaris, who twice journeyed into the East in search of manuscripts and curios. In the second of these he brought back upward of two hundred copies of valuable codices from the monasteries on Mount Athos. To still another service rendered by Lorenzo to the cause of the Renaissance attention must be called--the founding of the Florentine Academy for the study of Greek. This institution, distinct, be it remembered, from the _Uffiziali dello Studio_ (or high-school), exercised a marvellous influence on the progress of the "New Learning." Accordingly, as Roscoe says, succeeding scholars have been profuse in their acknowledgments to Lorenzo, who first formed the establishment from which, to use their own classical figure, as from the Trojan horse, so many illustrious champions have sprung, and by means of which the knowledge of the Greek tongue was extended not only throughout Italy, but throughout Europe as well, from all the countries of which numerous pupils flocked to Florence--pupils who afterward carried the learning they had received to their native lands.