m, sulphur,
bitumen; those products which the Italian soil could not bring forth were
imported, from the Black Sea, from Egypt, from Spain, from France, and
often returned whence they came, their worth doubled by labour and fine
workmanship. The rich man brought his merchandise, the poor his
industry: the one was sure of finding workmen, the other was sure of
finding work.

Art also was by no means behindhand: Dante, Giotto, Brunelleschi, and
Donatello were dead, but Ariosto, Raphael, Bramante, and Michael Angelo
were now living. Rome, Florence, and Naples had inherited the
masterpieces of antiquity; and the manuscripts of AEschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides had come (thanks to the conquest of Mahomet II) to rejoin
the statue of Xanthippus and the works of Phidias and Praxiteles. The
principal sovereigns of Italy had come to understand, when they let their
eyes dwell upon the fat harvests, the wealthy villages, the flourishing
manufactories, and the marvellous churches, and then compared with them
the poor and rude nations of fighting men who surrounded them on all
sides, that some day or other they were destined to become for other
countries what America was for Spain, a vast gold-mine for them to work.
In consequence of this, a league offensive and defensive had been signed,
about 1480, by Naples, Milan, Florence, and Ferrara, prepared to take a
stand against enemies within or without, in Italy or outside. Ludovico
Sforza, who was more than anyone else interested in maintaining this
league, because he was nearest to France, whence the storm seemed to
threaten, saw in the new pope's election means not only of strengthening
the league, but of making its power and unity conspicuous in the sight of
Europe.

CHAPTER IV

On the occasion of each new election to the papacy, it is the custom for
all the Christian States to send a solemn embassy to Rome, to renew their
oath of allegiance to the Holy Father. Ludovico Sforza conceived the
idea that the ambassadors of the four Powers should unite and make their
entry into Rome on the same day, appointing one of their envoy, viz. the
representative of the King of Naples, to be spokesman for all four.
Unluckily, this plan did not agree with the magnificent projects of Piero
dei Medici. That proud youth, who had been appointed ambassador of the
Florentine Republic, had seen in the mission entrusted to him by his
fellow-citizens the means of making a brilliant display o