Marsilio Ficino, whom he is here described as having met on his way from Rome, was the greatest Hellenist of his age and the keenest intellect among the older Florentine humanists. Small, frail and visionary, he combined in himself the qualities that distinguish and endear the typical scholar--patience, sagacity, preciseness, extreme modesty and a high tone of mental elevation. His fame rests on his translation into Latin of the works of Plato, and he was the colleague of Landini at the Florentine Academy, where he taught Greek. In the large fresco of Domenico Ghirlandajo in Santa Maria Novella at Florence, Marsilio Ficino and Landini are both represented among the painter’s distinguished contemporaries. Such were the men who met together at the hermitage of Camaldoli, upwards of four hundred years ago, rejoicing in the thought of spending a few days together. On the first day they rested. On the next they attended mass, and then they sallied forth into the forest, and there, under a spreading beech, they sat down and Leone Battista opened the discussion. Starting from the fact that the responsibilities of public life were about to devolve on the two young Medici owing to the ill-health of their father, he spoke of the duties of a citizen, and passed on to compare the respective merits of a life of activity and of a life of contemplation. This was a favourite subject of discussion at the time, and Leone Battista ended by pronouncing in favour of contemplation, a view which was in accordance with Plato’s ideality and with the Christian exaltation of Mary above Martha. On the following day the same subject was discussed in the same company, and on the days after they spoke of the greatest good and of the true aim of human existence. No doubt these _Conversations_ are largely of Landini’s making, but they were much appreciated by his contemporaries, and Marsilio Ficino is known to have admired them greatly. They were often reprinted at that period; now they have fallen into oblivion, and only the student now and again disturbs the dust which accumulates round them on the bookshelf.