paraphernalia and plebeian tinsel "which
dazzle the crowd and set them all agape"; but his expenditures were
those of an intellectual and accomplished oligarch. He was worthy, in
many respects, to be the chief of those haughty merchants and
manufacturers, who wielded more power, through the length of their
purses and the cultivation of their brains, than did all the
contemporaneous and illiterate barons of the rest of Christendom, by
dint of castle-storming and cattle-stealing.

In an age when other nobles were proud of being unable to write their
own names, or to read them when others wrote them, the great princes
and citizens of Florence protected and cultivated art, science, and
letters. Every citizen received a liberal education. Poets and
philosophers sat in the councils of the republic. Philosophy,
metaphysics, and the restoration of ancient learning occupied the
minds and diminished the revenues of its greater and inferior
burghers. In this respect, the Medici, and their abetters of the
fifteenth century, discharged a portion of the debt which they had
incurred to humanity. They robbed Italy of her freedom, but they gave
her back the philosophy of Plato. They reduced the generality of
Florentine citizens, who were once omnipotent, to a nullity; but they
had at least, the sense to cherish Donatello and Ghiberti,
Brunelleschi and Gozzoli, Ficino and Politian.

It is singular, too, with what comparatively small means the Medici
were enabled to do such great things. Cosmo, unquestionably the
greatest and most successful citizen that ever lived,--for he almost
rivalled Pericles in position, if not in talent, while he surpassed
him in good fortune,--was, during his lifetime, the virtual sovereign
of the most enlightened and wealthy and powerful republic that had
existed in modern times. He built the church of San Marco, the church
of San Lorenzo, the cloister of San Verdiano. On the hill of Fiesole he
erected a church and a convent. At Jerusalem he built a church and a
hospital for pilgrims. All this was for religion, the republic, and
the world. For himself he constructed four splendid villas, at
Careggi, Fiesole, Caffaggiolo, and Trebbio, and in the city the
magnificent palace in the Via Larga, now called the Riccardi.

In thirty-seven years, from 1434 to 1471, he and his successors
expended eight millions of francs (663,755 gold florins) in buildings
and charities,--a sum which may be represented by as many, or,