Delivered by these successes from external and domestic strife, the Medici were at leisure again to attend to their darling object, the promotion of learning. Several literary characters are here delineated; principally those of Cristoforo Landino, and Leo Battista Alberti, the Crichton of Italy, of whose unlimited powers the greatest was perhaps that, which he, if we believe Vasari, possessed over his horse; and our author proceeds to the giostra, or tournament, celebrated by Luca Pulci and Agnolo of Monte Pulciano, in which Lorenzo and Juliano appear to have been the principal actors, though the candidates were eighteen in number. 'The steed upon which Lorenzo made his first appearance,' says our historian, p. 96, 'was presented to him by Ferdinand King of Naples. That on which he relied in the combat, by Borso Marquis of Ferrara. The Duke of Milan had furnished him with his suit of armour. His motto was, _Le tems revient_; his device, the _fleurs de lys_; the privilege of using the arms of France having shortly before been conceded to the Medici by Louis XI., by a solemn act. His first conflict was with Carlo Borromei; his next with Braccio de' Medici, who attacked him with such strength and courage, that if the stroke had taken place, Orlando himself, as the poet assures us, could not have withstood the shock. Lorenzo took speedy vengeance, but his spear breaking into a hundred pieces, his adversary was preserved from total overthrow. He then assailed Carlo de Forme, whose helmet he split, and whom he nearly unhorsed; Lorenzo then changing his steed, made a violent attack upon Benedetto Salutati, who had just couched his lance ready for the combat.' Some specimens of the two panegyrics, with the plan of that composed by Politiano, are annexed, and translated with our author's own felicity. The philosophical amusements of the two brothers follow next, in a pertinent descant on the _disputationes Camaldulenses_ of Landino; and after these, Lorenzo is presented to us as a lover. The materials are furnished by his own sonnets, and the comment he composed on them, and, though the dead and the surviving beauties he celebrates are left nameless, there is reason to suppose, that they were Simonetta, the deceased mistress of his brother, and Lucretia Donati.