It was the Florentines, with their keen appreciation of the good things of life, who discovered the artistic side of the platonic life. Women did not count for nothing in their first deduction, which consisted in so linking the objects of nature to the human personality that they should form thenceforth nothing but one long procession of the affections. At Florence this new religion was observed with tender and pleasing rites. On the anniversary of Plato’s death, the master’s bust was crowned with laurel by invited guests, and then at a magnificent banquet spread under the pleasant shade, _laudes_ and _canzoni_ were sung in honour of the new spirit. Almost all were poets, and Lorenzo de’ Medici chiefest among them. They maintained a strict conformity with Christian ideas. The young Giovanni de’ Medici, the future Leo X., who was brought up among them, received at the age of seven valuable benefices with the ecclesiastical tonsure, and at thirteen was given the cardinal’s hat. All the leaders of the movement, Ficino, Pico della Mirandola,[142] Politian, were honoured with pontifical patronage. Rome also was the centre of a similar movement; there the academy of Pomponius Laetus[143] resuscitated the grand days of the republic; there men breathed as at Florence an intellectual air, light, keen and eminently free. To the _Facetiae_ of Poggio, babbled out in a room at the Vatican before a select circle of jovial monsignors, corresponded the joyous atrocities of Panormita, the boon companion of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Everyone smiled, everyone was happy: the very _bezants_ or golden pieces, the glory of the Medici escutcheon, sparkled in the sun like flashes of their wit. The luscious warmth of the air, shady groves, birds, gardens, statues, antique marbles, thus played an indispensable part in the platonic philosophy. A banquet in honour of the nine Muses served us as a map of this new world; Marzilio Ficino, chosen by lot, chanted to the glory of the divine character of love a superb song whose echoes were long to resound. Learned critics have sometimes reproached Ficino with not sticking close enough to the text of the master, and with permitting himself outbursts of virtuosity tinctured (so they say) with Alexandrinism. Likely enough; Ficino was Ficino, a man, independent, enthusiastic, no fanatic; he steered for happiness, and whatever his admiration for Socrates, he did not imagine that that great man had necessarily said the last word about everything, any more than he believed men eternally committed to Corinthian capitals. His dream was of a human dwelling-house, noble, comfortable, habitable for us all, a living shelter for life! While pushing out glorious reconnaissances along the roads to heaven, Plato had clearly left men’s minds undecided on some points of great importance to their happiness, and it seemed wise to supply his deficiency by accepting with closed eyes the explanations furnished by Christianity.