the end of the
year forced him to leave the city.

Then the boy artist went back to his home, only to find it changed
unspeakably. Florence, that had been a city of delight, was now a city
of dread. Savonarola held the people's ear, and had taught them to
destroy what Lorenzo had led them to love. The monks of San Marco made
bonfires of their paintings, priceless manuscripts had met with the same
fate, and Lorenzo's house had been robbed of all its sculpture. The
gardens were strewn with broken statues that had once been Michael
Angelo's delight. He walked through them sadly, and realized that he
alone was left of that group who had found so much happiness there only
a few years before. The words that he had spoken to Lorenzo on the day
he chiseled the faun came back to him, "To Rome I shall go some day,"
and thither he now set his face.

Thereafter the Eternal City claimed Michael Angelo. Cardinal after
cardinal, pope after pope, employed his marvelous genius to beautify the
capital of the world. As he had said, he found work to do in the Holy
Father's house. Whatever else they might do, the Italians of that age
worshiped art, and there were two stars in their sky, Raphael and
Michael Angelo.

Again Fate's wheel turned, and at last Michael Angelo returned to
Florence, loaded with honors, this time again the guest of a Medici,
Giulio, the playmate of his youth, ruling as autocrat where his father
had ruled as a mere citizen. A little later, and the shrewdest of the
three boys, Giovanni, became Pope Leo X.

As men the friends of boyhood differed, but they were alike in their
devotion to Florence and the things they had learned in her school years
before. At the height of his power Michael Angelo turned his hand to the
Medici Chapel and built there lasting monuments to their glory and his
genius, a wonderful return for the rare days of his boyhood in their
gardens.

III

Walter Raleigh

The Boy of Devon: 1552-1618

Summer was over England, and the county of Devon, running down to
Cornwall between two seas, was painted in bright hues. The downs were
softly carpeted with purple and yellow gorse and heather that made a
wonderful soft mist as one looked across the fields. Low hills,
brilliant green ridges against the sky, ran inland from the sea, and in
the little hollows here and there nestled small straw-thatched cottages
with shining white walls, or the more pretentious Tudor farmhouses with
red or brow