hly regarded, as attached to the most
respected of the Italian nobility. Following the custom of that
nobility, during the period of unrest in Italy, the Vespuccis
established themselves in a stately mansion near one of the city
gates, which is known as the Porta del Prato. Thus they were within
touch of the gay society of Florence, and could enjoy its advantages,
while at the same time in a position, in the event of an uprising, to
flee to their estates and stronghold in the country.

While the house in which Christopher Columbus was born remains
unidentified, and the year of his birth undecided, no such ambiguity
attaches to the place and year of Vespucci's nativity. Above the
doorway of the mansion which "for centuries before the discovery of
America was the dwelling-place of the ancestors of Amerigo Vespucci,
and his own birthplace," a marble tablet was placed, in the second
decade of the eighteenth century, bearing the following inscription:

"_To AMERICO VESPUCCIO, a noble Florentine,
Who, by the discovery of AMERICA,
Rendered his own and his Country's name illustrious,
[As] the AMPLIFIER OF THE WORLD.
Upon this ancient mansion of the VESPUCCI,
Inhabited by so great a man,
The holy fathers of Saint John of God
Have placed this Tablet, sacred to his memory._
A.D. 1719."

At that time, about midway between the date of Vespucci's death and
the present, the evidence was strong and continuous as to the
residence in that building (which was then used as a hospital) of the
family whose name it commemorates. Here was born, in 1451, the third
son of Anastasio and Elizabetta Vespucci, whose name, whether rightly
or not, was to be bestowed upon a part of the world at that time
unknown.

The Vespuccis were then aristocrats, with a long and boasted lineage,
but without great wealth to support their pretensions. They were
relatively poor; they were proud; but they were not ashamed to engage
in trade. Some of their ancestors had filled the highest offices
within the gift of the state, such as _prioris_ and _gonfalonieres_,
or magistrates and chief magistrates, while the first of the Vespuccis
known to have borne the praenomen Amerigo was a secretary of the
republic in 1336.

It is incontestable that Amerigo Vespucci was well-born, and in his
youth received the advantages of an education more thorough than was
usually enjoyed by th