amplifies the error, and transforms
John Osbeck into the convert Jew, who, having a handsome wife, it might
be surmised why the licentious King "should become gossip in so mean a
house." Hume adds: "People thence accounted for that resemblance which
was afterward remarked between young Perkin and that monarch." The
surmise of Bacon, grounded upon the error of Speed, is clinched into the
positive assertion of Hume as to a popular belief for which there is not
the slightest ground.--_Charles Knight_.]

[Footnote:3 The Abbey of Beaulieu, near Southampton.]

SAVONAROLA'S REFORMS AND DEATH

THE FRENCH INVADE ITALY

A.D. 1494

PASQUALE VILLARI JEAN C. L. SISMONDI

Girolamo Savonarola, the great moral, political, and religious reformer
of Italy, was born in Ferrara, September 21, 1452. He was of noble
family, studied medicine, but renounced his intended profession and
became a Dominican monk. In 1491 he became prior of St. Mark's, Florence.
When he began to preach in the Church of St. Mark on the sins of the
time, he applied to Italy the prophetic language of the Apocalypse. He
predicted the restoration of the Church in Italy through severe divine
viistations. His power in the pulpit was overwhelming, and the fame
of his preaching was spread abroad, many regarding him as an inspired
prophet. In his denunciations he spared neither wealth nor position,
laity nor clergy, and he exhorted the people to order their lives by the
simple rules of Scripture.

Savonarola refused to pay the customary homage of his office to the ruler
of Florence, who at this time was Lorenzo de' Medici. His own office,
the preacher declared, was received, not from Lorenzo, but from God.
Overlooking the slight, Lorenzo tried by all means to win Savonarola's
favor, but the reformer persisted in denouncing him. When a committee
asked the preacher to desist from his denunciations and prophetic
warnings, he bade them tell Lorenzo to repent of his sins, adding that,
if he threatened banishment, the ruler himself would soon depart, while
his censor would remain in Florence.

In 1492 Lorenzo died and his son Piero succeeded him. But Savonarola now
became the most powerful man in the republic, and he exerted himself for
reformation of his own monastery, the Church, and the state itself. Soon
he prophesied the downfall of the Medici, against whom he arrayed a
considerable part of the Florentine people. He predicted that one should
come over the Alp