once the rapture and despair of the new-born instinct of art. Rome woke to the consciousness of the priceless wealth long buried in her bosom. The earth seemed to renew her youth. There were giants in those days. Michael Angelo, great as poet, painter, and sculptor; Da Vinci, Ghiberti, Cellini, Fra Lippi, Macchiavelli, Petrarch, Politian-a brotherhood of art and letters never equalled in the world.*

But no good or evil is unmixed. This revived learning brought with it a revived paganism. This quickened art contained the seeds of its own moral taint. Social corruption and political tyranny and treachery flourished amid this too stimulating atmosphere. The moral antiseptic of a vital Christianity was wanting. The salt had lost its savour, and moral corruption ensued. The state of the Church was at its very worst. The Papacy was never more Heavendefying in its wickedness. A succession of human monsters occupied St. Peter's chair. Paul II., Sixtus IV., Innocent VIII., and the infamous Borgia-Alexander VI., had converted the Vatican into a theatre of the most odious vices. While wearing the title of Christ's Vicars on

Not among the "giants" of the time, but as one of its tenderest and most loving spirits, is to be mentioned Fra Angelico, whose lovely frescoes of saints and angels and Madonnas still adorn the cells of San Marco. He could not preach, but he could paint such beatific visions as fill our eyes with tears to-day. He never touched his brush till he had steeped his inmost soul in prayer.

Overcome with emotion, the tears often streamed down his face as he painted the Seven Sorrows of Mary or the raptures of the saved. He would take no money for his work it was its own exceeding great reward. When offered the archbishopric of Florence he humbly declined, and recom mended for that dignity a brother monk. He died at Rome while sitting at his easel -caught away to behold with open face the beatific vision on which his inner sight so long had dwelt. The holy faces of his angels still haunt our memory with a spell of power. Well did the saintly painter wear the name of Fra Angelico - the Angelic Brother.

earth, they were utterly pagan in sentiment and worse than pagan in life. They regarded," says Macaulay, "the Christian mysteries of which they were the stewards, just as the Augur Cicero and the Pontifex Maximus Cæsar regarded the Sibylline books and the pecking of the sacred chickens. Among themselves they spoke of the Incarnation, the Eucharist, and the Trinity in the same tone in which Cotta and Velleius talked of the oracle of Delphi, or of the voice of Faunus in the mountains."

Said Leo X.-himself a priest at eight and a cardinal at fourteen years of age-to his secretary Bembo, "All ages know well enough of what advantage this fable about Christ has been to us and ours." The same Bem bo cautions a friend against reading the Epistles of St. Paul, "lest his taste should be corrupted." Of the works of Macchiavelli, the foremost writer of the times, says Macaulay, "Such a display of wickedness, naked yet not ashamed: such cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seem rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men." Yet the highest honours of his age were heaped upon him, and at the first courts of Italy his atrocious sentiments evoked no condemnation, but rather the warmest approval.

Its

The city of Florence was, not even excepting Rome, the chief seat of the Renaissance revival in Italy. It was the very focus of art, of literature, of commerce. revenue was greater than that which both England and Ireland yielded to Elizabeth. Its cloth manufactures employed thirty thousand workmen. Eighty banks transacted its business, and that of Europe, on a scale that might surprise "even the contemporaries of the Barings and the Rothchilds."

"Every place," says Macaulay, "to which the merchant princes of Florence extended their gigantic traffic, from the

bazaars of the Tigris to the monasteries of the Clyde, was ransacked for medals and manuscripts. Architecture, painting and sculpture were munificently encouraged. We can hardly persuade ourselves that we are reading of times in which the annals of England and France present us only with a frightful spectacle of poverty, barbarity and ignorance. From the oppressions of illiterate masters and the sufferings of a brutalized peasantry, it is delightful to turn to the opulent and enlightened states of Italy-to the vast and magnificent cities, the ports, the arsenals, the villas, the museums, the libraries, the marts filled with every article of comfort and luxury, the manufactories swarming with artisans, the Apennines covered with rich cultivation to their very summits, the Po wafting the harvests of Lombardy to the granaries of Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of Siberia to the Palaces of Milan. With peculiar pleasure every cultivated mind must repose on the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence. But alas

for the beautiful city! A time was at hand when all the seven vials of the Apocalypse were to be poured forth and shaken out over those pleasant countries -a time for slaughter, famine, beggary, infamy, slavery, despair."

A characteristic of Florence has ever been her passionate love of liberty. On her arms for six hundred years has been inscribed the glorious word "Libertas." When other cities crouched beneath the heel of tyrants she flourished as a free republic. At length the princely House of the Medici obtained a sway which was really that of a monarch. The ostentatious prodigality of Lorenzo the Magnificent at once beguiled Florence of her liberty, corrupted her virtue, and hastened the calamities by which she was overwhelmed.

At this time, and on such a stage, God called the great Savonarola to play his brief but heroic part. The grandest soul of the fifteenth century animated his frail body. He beheld with dismay the awful corruptions of the times. He foretold the outpouring of the vials of wrath. upon the land. He sought to set up Christ's throne in the earth. Like

John the Baptist he was a voice crying, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is a hand." Like John the Baptist he fell a martyr to the truth which he proclaimed.

Savonarola was the scion of a noble family of Padua, but he was born at the ancient city of Ferrara, whose mouldering palaces and deits serted streets still speak of former opulence and splendour. He derived much of his heroic character from his brave souled mother, who recalls the noble women of the early days of Rome. To her unfaltering faith his heart turned ever for support and inspiration even in his sternest trials and his darkest hour. He had been educated for the profession of medicine, but the deeper misery of the world's moral maladies were to demand his sympathy and succour rather than its physical ills. He felt in his soul a call of God to devote himself to a religious life, and he fled from a world lying in wickedness to the cloistered seclusion of the Dominican monastery of Bologna. Here he performed the humblest duties of the convent, toiling in the garden, or repairing the garments of the monks. "Make me as one of thy hired servants was the cry of his world-weary heart as he sought refuge in the quiet of God's house. At the same time he devoted every hour of leisure to the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelical Doctor, to those of St. Augustine, and, above all, to the study of the Word of God. He was much given to prayer and fasting, to perplexed and often tearful thought. Like all great souls he nourished his spiritual strength by solitary communings with God, and wrestling with the great problems of duty and destiny. In two poems of this period, De Ruina Mundi and De Ruina Ecclesiæ, he mourns over the moral ruin of the Church and of the world.

In his soul there rankled, too, the deep and tender wound of disap

pointed human affection. In his youth he had loved with all the passionate ardour of his nature a daughter of the princely House of

grieved at the ignorance and worldliness of the monks. But he found congenial employment in teaching them the principles of philosophy,

THE CATHEDRAL, OR DUOMO, WITH GIOTTO'S TOWER, FLORENCE.

Strozzi.

But the impaired fortunes of his family caused the rejection of his suit it is said with scorn- by the proud patrician.

The zealous neophyte was greatly

and in expounding the Scriptures. His first attempts at public preaching, by which he was afterwards to sway so wonderfully the hearts of men, were very disheartening. In

his native town of Ferrara he could not get a hearing, and he bitterly remarked, “A prophet has no honour in his own country." Even in Florence his first audiences never exceeded twenty-five persons collected in the corner of a vast church. "I could not," he said, "so much as move a chicken."

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But the Word of God was as a fire in his bones," and could not be restrained. On his removal to the convent of San Marco be besought the prayers of the brethren and essayed to preach. He began a course of sermons on the Book of Revelation "and applied," says his biographer, "with tremendous force the imagery of John's vision to the condition and prospects of Italy. With a voice that rolled like thunder or pierced with the wild and mournful anguish of the loosened winds, he denounced the iniquities of the time, and foretold the tribulations that were at hand." Soon, so rapidly Soon, so rapidly his audience grew, he had to leave the chapel and preach in the open cloisters, "standing beneath a damask rose tree," to the multitudes who thronged to hear. To this day the place is pointed out, and a damask rose tree still marks the spot. He had found, at length, his work, and for the remaining eight years of his life his voice was the most potent in Italy.

The burden of his preaching, he tells us, were these three propositions: "That the Church of God would be renovated in the then present time; that fearful judgments would precede that renovation; and that these things would come soon." With the anointed vision of the seer, discerning wisely the signs of the times, he exhorted men to repentance from sin and reformation of life. Soon the convent of San Marco became too small to hold the crowd of eager listeners, and the great Duomo became thenceforth the theatre of the mighty eloquence of the preaching friar. The pale

face and deep, dark eyes gazed around on the vast assembly, and the thrilling, awe-inspiring voice filled the mighty dome.

His bold preaching proved very distasteful to the princely Lorenzo de Medici, by whom he had been promoted to the dignity of prior of San Marco. After attempting in vain to bribe him with gifts, the Prince sent a message threatening banishment from the city unless he learned more courtly ways. "Tell Lorenzo, from me," was the intrepid answer, "that though he is the first in the state, and I a foreigner and a poor brother, it will, nevertheless, happen that I shall remain after he is gone." These bold words were afterwards called to mind, as the greatest of the Medici lay upon his death-bed. In that solemn hour the dying prince sent for the only man in Florence who had dared to cross his will. The faithful preacher urged, as the condition of divine. pardon, reparation for deeds of oppression, and the restoration of the usurped liberties of Florence. But the ruling passion was strong in death, and the prince passed to the tribunal of the skies without the priestly absolution that he craved.

The succeeding prince, Piero de Medici, was no less a tyrant than his sire. But the pulpit of Savonarola continued to be the ruling power in Florence. The bold monk was therefore banished to Bologna, where he ceased not to proclaim the judgments of God. At length he returned, on foot, with nothing but his staff and wallet, to the destined scene of his brief triumph and glorious martyrdom.

Foreseeing the evils that threatened the state, he saw, or thought he saw, in the midst of the smiling heavens, the vision of a sword bearing the words "Gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter-The sword of the Lord on the earth, swiftly and soon." That sword proved to be the French king,

Charles VIII, who, with a powerful army, subdued the peninsula as far as Naples. As the tread of armies drew near, again the prophetic voice of Savonarola was heard in the great Duomo, proclaiming the judgments of God in tones which come across the ages and move our souls to-day. His text was, "Behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth."

"Behold," he said, "the cup of your iniquity is full. Behold the thunder of the Lord is gathering, and it shall fall and break the cup, and your iniquity, which seems to you as pleasant wine, shall be poured out upon you, and shall be as molten lead. And you, O priests, who say, Ha, ha! there is no Presence in the sanctuary-the Shechinah is naughtthe Mercy-seat is bare; we may sin behind the veil and who will punish us? To you I say, the presence of God shall be revealed in His temple as a consuming fire, and your sacred garments shall become a winding sheet of flame, and for sweet music there shall be shrieks and hissing, and for soft couches there shall be thorns, and for the breath of wantons shall come the pestilence; for God will no longer endure the pollution of His sanctuary; He will thoroughly purge His Church.

"Hear now, O Florence, chosen city in a chosen land! Repent and forsake evil; do justice; love mercy; put away all uncleanness from among you, and then the pestilence shall not enter, and the sword shall pass over you and leave you unhurt.

"Listen, O people, over whom my heart yearns as the heart of a mother over the children she has travailed for! God is my witness that, but for your sakes, I would willingly live as a turtle in the depths of the forest, singing low to my Beloved, who is mine and I am His. O Lord, Thou knowest I am willing, I am ready. Take me, stretch me on Thy cross; let the thorns press upon my brow, and let my sweat be anguish-I desire to be like Thee in Thy great love. But let me see the fruit of my travail; let this people be saved!"

Nor were the labours of Savonarola for the welfare of Florence confined to the pulpit of the Duomo. He went forth alone and on foot as an embassy to the invader, Charles

VIII. In the spirit of Elijah rebuking Ahab he boldly admonished him.

"Most Christian King," he began, "thou art an instrument in the Lord's hand, who sends thee to assuage the miseries of Italy (as I have foretold for many years past), and lays on thee the duty of reforming the Church which lies prostrate in the dust. But if thou failest to be just and merciful; if thou dost not show respect to the city of Florence, to its women, its citizens, its liberty; if thou forgette-t the work for which the Lord sends thee, He will then choose another to perform it, and will in anger let His hand fall heavily upon thee, and will punish thee with dreadful scourges. These things I say to thee in the name of the Lord.

Once again "a poor wise man by his wisdom delivered a city," besieged by its enemies. The humble monk was a stronger defence of Florence than its walls and moats and armaments. Its ruler, Piero de Medici, fled in the hour of peril, and, in the disguise of a liveried lackey, sought an asylum in Venice. His palace was sacked and his art treasures scattered by the fickle mob, whom only the influence of Savonarola could call back to order. The French armies entered the city as allies instead of as enemies. Their long stay, however, wore out their welcome. Charles submitted an ultimatum which Capponi, the tribune of the people, refused to accept. "Then we will sound our trumpets," exclaimed the irritated king, threatening force. "And we," cried the patriot tribune, rending the parchment in pieces, "we will ring our bells." And the old cow, as the Florentines called the great bell in the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, began to low,* its deep reverberations sounding like a tocsin over the city, where every house would become a fortress and every citizen a soldier for the defence of its ancient rights. Again Savonarola became the

* La vacca muglia was the phrase for the ringing of this great bell, whose deep-toned notes still boom from its lofty tower.