t, taken up by his different ventures,--painting,
sculpture, engineering, even arranging festivities--but his greater
project was doomed to failure, enmeshed in the downfall of Ludovico.
Even to this he remained impassive. "Visconti dragged to prison, his
son dead, ... the duke has lost his state, his possessions, his
liberty, and has finished nothing he undertook," was his only comment
on his patron's end, written on the {xii} margin of a manuscript.
After the overthrow of the Duke of Milan, began his Italian wanderings.
At one time he contemplated entering the service of an Oriental prince.
Instead, he entered that of Caesar Borgia, as military engineer, and
the greatest painter of the age became inspector of a despot's
strongholds. But his restless nature did not leave him long at this.
Returning to Florence he competed with Michelangelo; yet the service of
even his native city could not retain him. His fame had attracted the
attention of a new patron of the arts, prince of the state which had
conquered his first master. In this his last venture, he forsook
Italy, only to die three years later at Amboise, in the castle of the
French king.

The inner nature of Leonardo remained as untouched by the men he
encountered as by the events which were then stirring Europe. Alone,
he influenced others, remaining the while a mystery to all. The most
gifted of nations failed to understand the greatest of her sons.
Isabella d'Este, the first lady of her time, seeking vainly to obtain
some product of his brush, was told that his life was changeful and
uncertain, that he lived for the day, intent only on his art. His own
thoughts reveal him in another light. "I wish to work miracles," he
wrote. And elsewhere he exclaimed, "Thou, O God, sellest us all
benefits, at the cost of our toil.... As a day well spent makes sleep
{xiii} seem pleasant, so a life well employed makes death pleasant. A
life well spent is long."

Leonardo's views of aesthetic are all important in his philosophy of
life and art. The worker's thoughts on his craft are always of
interest. They are doubly so when there is in them no trace of
literary self-consciousness to blemish their expression. He recorded
these thoughts at the instant of their birth, for a constant habit of
observation and analysis had early developed with him into a second
nature. His ideas were penned in the same fragmentary way as they
presented themselves to his mind, perhap