ry. Penetrated with the passion for erudition which distinguished
Florence in the fifteenth century, familiar with her painters and her
sculptors, deeply read in the works of her great poets, he conceived
the ideal of infusing the spirit of antique civility into modern life,
and of effecting for society what the artists were performing in their
own sphere. To preserve the native character of the Florentine genius,
while he added the grace of classic form, was the aim to which his
tastes and instincts led him. At the same time, while he made himself
the master of Florentine revels and the Augustus of Renaissance
literature, he took care that beneath his carnival masks and
ball-dress should be concealed the chains which he was forging for the
republic.

What he lacked, with so much mental brilliancy, was moral greatness.
The age he lived in was an age of selfish despots, treacherous
generals, godless priests. It was an age of intellectual vigour and
artistic creativeness; but it was also an age of mean ambition, sordid
policy, and vitiated principles. Lorenzo remained true in all respects
to the genius of this age: true to its enthusiasm for antique culture,
true to its passion for art, true to its refined love of pleasure; but
true also to its petty political intrigues, to its cynical
selfishness, to its lack of heroism. For Florence he looked no higher
and saw no further than Cosimo had done. If culture was his pastime,
the enslavement of the city by bribery and corruption was the hard
work of his manhood. As is the case with much Renaissance art, his
life was worth more for its decorative detail than for its
constructive design. In richness, versatility, variety, and
exquisiteness of execution, it left little to be desired; yet, viewed
at a distance, and as a whole, it does not inspire us with a sense of
architectonic majesty.

XIII

Lorenzo's chief difficulties arose from the necessity under which,
like Cosimo, he laboured of governing the city through its old
institutions by means of a party. To keep the members of this party in
good temper, and to gain their approval for the alterations he
effected in the State machinery of Florence, was the problem of his
life. The successful solution of this problem was easier now, after
two generations of the Medicean ascendency, than it had been at first.
Meanwhile the people were maintained in good humour by public shows,
ease, plenty, and a general laxity of discipline