. 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 a 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 bad popes and quarrelsome 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 til