State.

In the early dawn of the Reformation, several of our own countrymen
visited the city of the Medici, that they might have access to the works
of antiquity which Cosmo had collected, and enjoy the converse of the
learned men that thronged his palace. "William Selling," says D'Aubigne,
"a young English ecclesiastic, afterwards distinguished at Canterbury by
his zeal in collecting valuable manuscripts,--his fellow-countrymen,
Grocyn, Lilly, and Latimer, 'more bashful than a maiden,'--and, above
all, Linacre, whom Erasmus ranked above all the scholars of Italy,--used
to meet in the delicious villa of the Medici, with Politian,
Chalcondyles, and other men of learning; and there, in the calm evenings
of summer, under that glorious Tuscan sky, they dreamt romantic visions
of the Platonic philosophy. When they returned to England, these learned
men laid before the youth of Oxford the marvellous treasures of the
Greek language." We are repaying the debt, by sending to that land a
better philosophy than any these learned men ever brought from it. This
leads us to speak of the religious movement in progress in Tuscany.

After all, man's power for evil is extremely limited. The very opposite
is the ordinary estimate. When we mark the career of a conqueror like
Napoleon, or the withering effects of an organization like that of Rome,
and compare these with the feeble results of a preacher like Savonarola,
whose body the fire reduced to ashes, and whose disciples persecution
speedily scattered, we say that man's power to destroy his species is
almost omnipotent,--his power to benefit them scarce appreciable. But
spread out the long cycles of history and the long ages of the world,
and you learn that the triumphs of evil, though sudden, are temporary,
and those of truth slow but eternal. A true word spoken by a single man
has in it more power than armies, and will, in the long run, do more to
bless than all that tyrannies can do to blight mankind. Savonarola,
feeble as he seemed, and unprotected as he was, wielded a power greater
than that of Rome. The truths sown by the preacher on the banks of the
Arno so many centuries ago are not yet dead. They are springing up; and,
long after Rome shall have passed away, they will be a source of
liberty, of civilization, of arts, and of eternal life, to his
countrymen.

A political storm heralded the quiet spring-time of evangelical truth
which has of late blessed that land. Prior to 18