equilibrium of power in Italy.  Leo X. has enjoyed a greater fame than he deserved.  Extolled as an Augustus in his lifetime, he left his name to what is called the golden age of Italian culture.  Yet he cannot be said to have raised any first-rate men of genius, or to have exercised a very wise patronage over those whom Julius brought forward.  Michelangelo and Raffaello were in the full swing of work when Leo claimed their services.  We shall see how he hampered the rare gifts of the former by employing him on uncongenial labours; and it was no great merit to give a free rein to the inexhaustible energy of Raffaello.  The project of a new S. Peter’s belonged to Julius.  Leo only continued the scheme, using such assistants as the times provided after Bramante’s death in 1514.  Julius instinctively selected men of soaring and audacious genius, who were capable of planning on a colossal scale.  Leo delighted in the society of clever people, poetasters, petty scholars, lutists, and buffoons.  Rome owes no monumental work to his inventive brain, and literature no masterpiece to his discrimination.  Ariosto, the most brilliant poet of the Renaissance, returned in disappointment from the Vatican.  “When I went to Rome and kissed the foot of Leo,” writes the ironical satirist, “he bent down from the holy chair, and took my hand and saluted me on both cheeks.  Besides, he made me free of half the stamp-dues I was bound to pay; and then, breast full of hope, but smirched with mud, I retired and took my supper at the Ram.”

The words which Leo is reported to have spoken to his brother Giuliano when he heard the news of his election, express the character of the man and mark the difference between his ambition and that of Julius.  “Let us enjoy the Papacy, since God has given it us.”  To enjoy life, to squander the treasures of the Church on amusements, to feed a rabble of flatterers, to contract enormous debts, and to disturb the peace of Italy, not for some vast scheme of ecclesiastical aggrandisement, but in order to place the princes of his family on thrones, that was Leo’s conception of the Papal privileges and duties.  The portraits of the two Popes, both from the hand of Raffaello, are eminently characteristic.  Julius, bent, white-haired, and emaciated, has the nervous glance of a passionate and energetic temperament.  Leo, heavy-jawed, dull-eyed, with thick lips and a brawny jowl, betrays the coarser fibre of a sensualist.

II

We have seen already that Julius, before his death, provided for his monument being carried out upon a reduced scale.  Michelangelo entered into a new contract with the executors, undertaking to finish the work within the space of seven years from the date of the deed, May 6, 1513.  He received in several payments, during that year and the years 1514, 1515, 1516, the total sum of 6100 golden ducats.  This proves that he must have pushed the various operations