conciliated, in an eminent degree, the esteem and affections of his fellow-citizens. 'In his person, Lorenzo was tall and athletic, and had more the appearance of strength than of elegance. From his birth, he laboured under some peculiar disadvantages--his sight was weak, his voice harsh and unpleasing, and he was totally deprived of the sense of smell. With all these defects his countenance was dignified, and gave an idea of the magnanimity of his character; and the effects of his eloquence were conspicuous on many important occasions. In his youth, he was much addicted to active and laborious exercises, to hawking, horsemanship, and country sports. Though not born to support a military character, he gave sufficient proofs of his courage, not only in public tournaments, which were then not unfrequent in Italy, but also upon more trying occasions. Such was the versatility of his talents, that it is difficult to discover any department of business, or of amusement, of art, or of science, to which they were not at some time applied; and in whatever he undertook, he arrived at a proficiency which would seem to have required the labour of a life much longer than that which he was permitted to enjoy. 'The native energy and versatility of his character were invigorated by a suitable education: to the notions of piety, imbibed from Gentile d'Urbino, and perhaps from his mother, he added the accomplishments of a scholar, under the tuition of Landino, and received the elements of the Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy from Argyropylus and Ficino; but that exquisite taste in poetry, in music, and in every department of the fine arts, which enabled him to contribute so powerfully towards their restoration, was an endowment of nature, the want of which no education could have supplied.' Such were the qualifications with which Lorenzo entered on the stage of public life, and which enabled him, with the political experience he had acquired on his travels through the most powerful states of Italy, and the connexions he had then formed, to defeat, at his return, the conspiracy framed by Luca Pitti against his father Piero, and probably to frustrate the war raised against Florence by its exiles, without the loss of much blood or treasure.