atmosphere a number of native artists of considerable distinction sprang up. Lodovico equally favoured men of letters and scientific inquirers. He invited them to Milan, and gave them great rewards, and did his utmost by grants and personal care to raise the University of Pavia and the schools founded at Milan by Galeazzo to a flourishing condition. [Illustration: CANAL, VIA SAN MARCO] But the merits of the Moro’s government were obscured to the people by his tyrannic methods. The peasants, groaning under the oppression of forced labour and of heavy and unjustly distributed taxation, were too preoccupied by their immediate grievances to care for the rich harvest which would ensue some day from the sacrifice of their sweat and their scanty gains. In their belief the Prince sought only self-glorification and the increase of the already fabulous ducal treasure. Their simple lamentations sound in the pages of the chroniclers like a dull threatening undertone in that wonderful symphony of rich and various instruments which the life of the Milanese Court was at this time. [Illustration: CANONICA OF ST. AMBROGIO] One of the worst characteristics of a tyrant was, however, conspicuously absent in Lodovico Sforza. He was not cruel. Galeazzo’s horrible ways of enforcing the law no longer prevailed. The gallows vanished; fragments of quartered traitors adorned the gates no more, and such pains as justice or policy necessitated were administered out of the sight and, if possible, knowledge of the Moro. Even Guicciardini describes the Moro as _mild and merciful_. The sight of bodily suffering hurt his fastidious delicacy, his love of fair and seemly appearance, his fine sensibilities. His shrinking from blood was perhaps a sign of what may explain much that seems dark in his history—fear; of the decadence which fatally awaits races risen too swiftly to greatness. However that may be, his mildness did not win the hearts of the people for a sovereign who addressed them from behind the protection of iron bars and never admitted them to free and friendly audience. An ever-widening gulf divided their lives of elemental want and passion from the exquisite existence of subtle and various delight within the impassable walls of the Castello. It was for the Moro, we remember, that Leonardo sketched the plans of an ideal city, with an upper system of streets in which the sovereign and his chosen society of nobles and courtiers might pass, uncontaminated by the breath and odour of the multitudes below.