The variety of the materials that compose the third chapter, which opens with the political state of Italy at the time of Lorenzo's succession to the direction of the republic, is too great, perhaps the incidents too minute, and the transition from event to event too rapid, to admit of extracts. The riches of the Medici, their commercial concerns, and other sources of revenue--the character of Giuliano de' Medici, that of Angelo Politiano--the league between the Duke of Milan, the Venetians, and the Florentines--the establishment of the academy of Pisa--an account of Lorenzo's Poem, entitled _Altercatione_, with specimens and translations, constitute the most prominent features of the chapter. The fourth chapter, whether we consider the importance of the events related, or the perspicuity and energy with which they are developed and told, contains, in our opinion, the most interesting period in the life of Lorenzo, the annals of Florence, and the general history of that time. 'The conspiracy of the Pazzi,' says our author, p. 176, was 'a transaction in which a pope, a cardinal, an archbishop, and several other ecclesiastics, associated themselves with a band of ruffians, to destroy two men who were an honour to their age and country; and purposed to perpetrate their crime at a season of hospitality, in the sanctuary of a Christian church, and at the very moment of the elevation of the host, when the audience bowed down before it, and the assassins were presumed to be in the immediate presence of their God.' Having traced the origin of the conspiracy to Rome, and the ambition and inveterate enmity of Sixtus the Fourth, and his nephew, Count Girolamo Riario, to Lorenzo, Mr. R. proceeds to their Florentine accomplices, the family of the Pazzi, whom, though allied by intermarriages to that of the Medici, envy, intolerance of superiority, penury, and profligacy, had rendered their irreconcilable enemies. The young Cardinal Riario our author considers more as an instrument in the hands of his uncle Girolamo, than as an accomplice in the scheme; and proceeds: