and all the arts of Florence were pressed into the service of these festivals.  Machiavelli says that the burghers lost the last remnant of their old austerity of manners, and became, like the degenerate Romans, ready to obey the masters who provided them with brilliant spectacles.  They gazed with admiration on the pomp of Italian princes, their dissolute and godless living, their luxury and prodigal expenditure; and when the Medici affected similar habits in the next generation, the people had no courage to resist the invasion of their pleasant vices.

In the same year, 1471, Volterra was reconquered for the Florentines by Frederick of Urbino.  The honours of this victory, disgraced by a brutal sack of the conquered city, in violation of its articles of capitulation, were reserved for Lorenzo, who returned in triumph to Florence.  More than ever he assumed the prince, and in his person undertook to represent the State.

In the same year, 1471, Francesco della Rovere was raised to the Papacy with the memorable name of Sixtus IV.  Sixtus was a man of violent temper and fierce passions, restless and impatiently ambitious, bent on the aggrandisement of the beautiful and wanton youths, his nephews.  Of these the most aspiring was Girolamo Riario, for whom Sixtus bought the town of Imola from Taddeo Manfredi, in order that he might possess the title of count and the nucleus of a tyranny in the Romagna.  This purchase thwarted the plans of Lorenzo, who wished to secure the same advantages for Florence.  Smarting with the sense of disappointment, he forbade the Roman banker, Francesco Pazzi, to guarantee the purchase-money.  By this act Lorenzo made two mortal foes—­the Pope and Francesco Pazzi.  Francesco was a thin, pale, atrabilious fanatic, all nerve and passion, with a monomaniac intensity of purpose, and a will inflamed and guided by imagination—­a man formed by nature for conspiracy, such a man, in fact, as Shakspere drew in Cassius.  Maddened by Lorenzo’s prohibition, he conceived the notion of overthrowing the Medici in Florence by a violent blow.  Girolamo Riario entered into his views.  So did Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, who had private reasons for hostility.  These men found no difficulty in winning over Sixtus to their plot; nor is it possible to purge the Pope of participation in what followed.  I need not describe by what means Francesco drew the other members of his family into the scheme, and how he secured the assistance of armed cut-throats.  Suffice it to say that the chief conspirators, with the exception of the Count Girolamo, betook themselves to Florence, and there, after the failure of other attempts, decided to murder Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano in the cathedral on Sunday, April 26th, 1478.  The moment when the priest at the high altar finished the mass, was fixed for the assassination.  Everything was ready.  The conspirators, by Judas kisses and embracements, had discovered that the young men wore