the people and his train, 3,600 for the maintenance of the Signory in the Palazzo, and so on down to a sum of 2,400 for the food of the lions, for candles, torches, and bonfires.  The amount spent publicly in almsgiving; the salaries of ambassadors and governors; the cost of maintaining the state armory; the pay of the night-watch; the money spent upon the yearly games when the palio was run; the wages of the city trumpeters; and so forth, are all accurately reckoned.  In fact the ordinary Budget of the Commune is set forth.  The rate of extraordinary expenses during war-time is estimated on the scale of sums voted by the Florentines to carry on the war with Martino della Scala in 1338.  At that time they contributed 25,000 florins monthly to Venice, maintained full garrisons in the fortresses of the republic, and paid as well for upwards of 1,000 men at arms.  In order that a correct notion of these balance-sheets may be obtained, Villani is careful to give particulars about the value of the florin and the lira, and the number of florins coined yearly.  In describing the condition of Florence at this period, he computes the number of citizens capable of bearing arms, between the ages fifteen and seventy, at 25,000; the population of the city at 90,000, not counting the monastic communities, nor including the strangers, who are estimated at about 15,000.  The country districts belonging to Florence add 80,000 to this calculation.  It is further noticed that the excess of male births over female was between 300 and 500 yearly in Florence, that from 8,000 to 10,000 boys and girls learned to read; that there were six schools, in which from 10,000 to 12,000 children learned arithmetic; and four high schools, in which from 550 to 600 learned grammar and logic.  Then follows a list of the religious houses and churches:  among the charitable institutions are reckoned 30 hospitals capable of receiving more than 1,000 sick people.  Here too it may be mentioned that Villani reckons the beggars of Florence at 17,000, with the addition of 4,000 paupers and sick persons and religious mendicants.[2] These mendicants were not all Florentines, but received relief from the city charities.  The big wool factories are numbered at upwards of two hundred; and it is calculated that from sixty to eighty thousand pieces of cloth were turned out yearly, to the value in all of about 1,200,000 florins.  More than 30,000 persons lived by this industry.  The calimala factories, where foreign cloths were manufactured into fine materials, numbered about twenty.  These imported some 10,000 pieces of cloth yearly, to the value of 300,000 florins.  The exchange offices are estimated at about eighty in number.  The fortunes made in Florence by trade and by banking were colossal for those days.  Villani tells us that the great houses of the Bardi and Peruzzi lent to our King Edward III. more than 1,365,000 golden florins.[3] ‘And mark this,’ he continues, ’that these moneys were chiefly