o return to Nuremberg, where he was pensioned $600 a
year by the emperor. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo both received
$129 a month for work done for a prince, and the latter was given a
pension of $5200 a year by Paul III. Raphael in 1520 left an estate of
$140,000.

[Sidenote: Value of money]

If a comparison of the value of money is made, the final impression
that one gets is that an ounce of gold was in 1563, let us say,
expected to do about ten times as much work as the same weight of
precious metal performed in 1913.[2] If a few articles were then
actually dearer, they were comparatively unimportant and were balanced
by other articles even more than ten times as cheap. But a dollar will
buy so many articles now which did not exist in former ages that a
plausible case can be made out for the paradox that money is now worth
more than it ever was before. If an ounce of gold would in Luther's
time exchange for a much larger quantity of simple necessaries than it
will purchase now, on the other hand a man with an income of $5000 a
year is far better off than a man with the {473} same income, or indeed
with any income, was then.

[Sidenote: Trend of prices]

Notwithstanding the great difficulties of making out any fair index
number representing the cost of living and applicable to long periods,
owing to the fact that articles vary from time to time, as when candles
are replaced by gas and gas by electricity, yet the general trend of
prices can be pretty plainly ascertained. Generally speaking,
prices--measured in weight of gold and not in coin--sank slowly from
1390 till 1520 under the influence of better technical methods of
production and possibly of the draining of gold and silver to the
Orient. From 1520 till 1560 prices rose quite slowly on account of the
increased production of gold and silver and its more rapid circulation
by means of better banking. From 1560 to 1600 prices rose with
enormous rapidity, partly because of the destruction of wealth and
increase in the cost of production following in the wake of the French
and Dutch wars of religion, and still more, perhaps, on account of the
torrent of American silver suddenly poured into the lap of Europe.
Taking the century as a whole, we find that wheat rose the most, as
much as 150 per cent. in England, 200 per cent. in France and 300 per
cent. in Germany. Other articles rose less, and in some cases remained
stationary, or sank in price. Mone