m (and he was well known to
everybody) said, 'Barlacchia, _mind the rules_'--meaning the rules of
health; or else, 'Barlacchia, look to yourself;' or _regolati_! or
_guardatevi_!--till at last he became tired with answering them. So
he got several small wooden rules or rulers, such as writers use to
draw lines, and hung them by a cord to his neck, and with them a
little mirror, and when any one said '_Regolati_'--'mind the rules,'
he made no reply, but looked at the sticks, and when they cried
'_Guardatevi_!' he regarded himself in the mirror, and so they were
answered."

This agrees with the sketch of Lorenzo as given by Oscar Browning in his
admirable "Age of the Condottieri," a short history of Mediaeval Italy
from 1409 to 1530:

"Lorenzo was a bad man of business; he spent such large sums on
himself that he deserved the appellation of the Magnificent. He
reduced himself to poverty by his extravagance; he alienated his
fellow-citizens by his lust . . . and was shameless in the promotion
of his private favourites."

Yet with all this he was popular, and left a legendary fame in which
generosity rivals a love of adventure. I have collected many traditions
never as yet published relating to him, and in all he appears as a _bon
prince_.

"But verily when I consider that what made a gallant lord four hundred
years ago would be looked after now by the Lord Chancellor and the law
courts with a sharp stick, I must needs," writes Flaxius, "exclaim with
Spenser sweet:

"'Me seemes the world is run quite out of square,
For that which all men once did Vertue call,
Is now called Vice, and that which Vice was hight
Is now hight Vertue, and so used of all;
Right now is wrong, and wrong that was, is right,
As all things else in time are changed quight.'"

LEGENDS OF THE BRIDGES IN FLORENCE

"I stood upon a bridge and heard
The water rushing by,
And as I thought, to every word
The water made reply.

I looked into the deep river,
I looked so still and long,
Until I saw the elfin shades
Pass by in many a throng.

They came and went like starry dreams,
For ever moving on,
As darkness takes the starry beams
Unnoted till they're gone."

There is something in a bridge, and especially in an old one, which has
been time-worn and mossed into harmony with surrounding nat