ree that they are all kings.
Christianity, in Savonarola's mind, identical with democracy, is the
hardest of gospels; there is nothing that so strikes men with fear as
the saying that they are all the sons of God.

Savonarola and his republic fell. The drug of despotism was administered
to the people, and they forgot what they had been. There are some at the
present day who have so strange a respect for art and letters, and for
mere men of genius, that they conceive the reign of the Medici to be an
improvement on that of the great Florentine republican. It is such men
as these and their civilisation that we have at the present day to fear.
We are surrounded on many sides by the same symptoms as those which
awoke the unquenchable wrath of Savonarola--a hedonism that is more sick
of happiness than an invalid is sick of pain, an art sense that seeks
the assistance of crime since it has exhausted nature. In many modern
works we find veiled and horrible hints of a truly Renaissance sense of
the beauty of blood, the poetry of murder. The bankrupt and depraved
imagination does not see that a living man is far more dramatic than a
dead one. Along with this, as in the time of the Medici, goes the
falling back into the arms of despotism, the hunger for the strong man
which is unknown among strong men. The masterful hero is worshipped as
he is worshipped by the readers of the 'Bow Bells Novelettes,' and for
the same reason--a profound sense of personal weakness. That tendency to
devolve our duties descends on us, which is the soul of slavery, alike
whether for its menial tasks it employs serfs or emperors. Against all
this the great clerical republican stands in everlasting protest,
preferring his failure to his rival's success. The issue is still
between him and Lorenzo, between the responsibilities of liberty and the
licence of slavery, between the perils of truth and the security of
silence, between the pleasure of toil and the toil of pleasure. The
supporters of Lorenzo the Magnificent are assuredly among us, men for
whom even nations and empires only exist to satisfy the moment, men to
whom the last hot hour of summer is better than a sharp and wintry
spring. They have an art, a literature, a political philosophy, which
are all alike valued for their immediate effect upon the taste, not for
what they promise of the destiny of the spirit. Their statuettes and
sonnets are rounded and perfect, while 'Macbeth' is in comparison a