The direct power of the learned princesses of the literary courts is more readily seen. By virtue of their position, as well as their talents, they created a society, spread a taste for things of the intellect, and did a great deal to curb the vice and cruelty which pressed with special severity on their own sex. If they could not change the drift of the age, and were subject to conditions which good men were unable to control, they tempered and modified them. The whole Platonic movement, which they did so much to foster, was a protest against the sensualism that has always been their worst enemy. To sustain a spiritual cult in a race that worshiped, before all things, material beauty was not easy. It had a tendency always to lose itself in phrases and mystical subtleties, but it put woman on a new pedestal, and social life on a higher plane. We have only to note the bacchanalian revels of the poets, wits, and philosophers of Florence, the orgies of folly, vulgarity, and sin which the great Lorenzo led and the very wise Platonic Academy smiled upon, to learn the difference between a lettered society of men without the tempering influence of high-minded women, and the brilliant circles we have seen gathered about princesses of learning, refinement, and grace, who guided its amusements and restrained its license. No woman of conspicuous virtue and ability has left a permanent stamp on the social life of Florence. Clarice, the wife of the versatile Lorenzo, had many virtues, but she was evidently in no sense a leader. Poliziano has no prejudice against learned women, as he falls in love with the gifted and beautiful Alessandra Scala and is inconsolable because she will not marry him. He also pays court to Cassandra Fidelis, and corresponds with Lucrezia, the mother of his patron, who is finely educated and writes poetry; but he is angry when Clarice interferes with his manner of training her children, “because she is a woman and unlettered”; indeed, he quarrels with her about it and goes away. She, in her turn, finds fault with his pagan morals, and is glad to be rid of his presence, no doubt with good reason. But whatever she may have been as a mother, she seems to have lacked the talent or the desire to gather about her a lettered society, and the result is seen in the disgraceful orgies of her husband and his clever satellites, with no advantage to the “unhampered intellects” of these poets and savants, but with a decided disadvantage to their manners and morals. It was during the reign of pure, highly educated, and able women that the Italian courts reached their highest point of power and brilliancy. When, by the accident of succession, those of smaller caliber and more frivolous tastes took the scepter, they invariably declined and lost their prestige.