were profound.  He was familiar with the ancient poets and historians and philosophers; he was still better acquainted with the abstruse speculations of the schoolmen.  He delighted in universities and scholastic retreats; from the cares and duties of public life he would retire to solitary labors, and dignify his retirement by improving studies.  He did not live in a cell, like Jerome, or a cave, like Mohammed; but no man was ever more indebted to solitude and meditation than he for that insight and inspiration which communion with God and great ideas alone can give.

And yet, though recluse and student, he had great experiences with life.  He was born among the higher ranks of society.  He inherited an ample patrimony.  He did not shrink from public affairs.  He was intensely patriotic, like Michael Angelo; he gave himself up to the good of his country, like Savonarola.  Florence was small, but it was important; it was already a capital, and a centre of industry.  He represented its interests in various courts.  He lived with princes and nobles.  He took an active part in all public matters and disputations; he was even familiar with the intrigues of parties; he was a politician as well as scholar.  He entered into the contests between Popes and Emperors respecting the independence of Italy.  He was not conversant with art, for the great sculptors and painters had not then arisen.  The age was still dark; the mariner’s compass had not been invented, chimneys had not been introduced, the comforts of life were few.  Dames of highest rank still spent their days over the distaff or in combing flax.  There were no grand structures but cathedral churches.  Life was laborious, dismal, and turbulent.  Law and order did not reign in cities or villages.  The poor were oppressed by nobles.  Commerce was small and manufactures scarce.  Men lived in dreary houses, without luxuries, on coarse bread and fruit and vegetables.  The crusades had not come to an end.  It was the age of quarrelsome popes and cruel nobles, and lazy monks and haughty bishops, and ignorant people, steeped in gloomy superstitions, two hundred years before America was discovered, and two hundred and fifty years before Michael Angelo erected the dome of St. Peter’s.

But there was faith in the world, and rough virtues, sincerity, and earnestness of character, though life was dismal.  Men believed in immortality and in expiation for sin.  The rising universities had gifted scholars whose abstruse speculations have never been rivalled for acuteness and severity of logic.  There were bards and minstrels, and chivalric knights and tournaments and tilts, and village fetes and hospitable convents and gentle ladies,—­gentle and lovely even in all states of civilization, winning by their graces and inspiring men to deeds of heroism and gallantry.