the evil days. The infamous way in which the city was treated by the Pope's legates, Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi da Corneto and Cardinal Ludovico Scarampo Mezzarota, finds comparison only in the deeds of Genseric or of the Connétable de Bourbon. And yet Flavio Biondo, the author of the "Roma Triumphans" and of the "Roma Instaurata,” the first topographical works written in the spirit and in the light of the Renaissance, addresses both to Eugenius as if he were the best and kindest friend of the city. "The Lateran palace," Biondo says, "had lately and for the greater part fallen to the ground; but thou, Eugene, most holy Father, hast rebuilt it at a great cost, adding to it a monastery in the foundations of which, at the depth of eighty-two feet, beautiful columns, statues, and marble pavements have been found." And again, speaking of the Pantheon: "The whole city sing thy praises, Eugene, for having covered with sheets of lead the great dome, and for having freed the columns of the portico from the ignoble booths and shops which concealed their lower half. Thou hast also paved with stone the piazza in front of the temple, and the main street of the Campo Marzio."

The list of the works accomplished under the following Pope, Nicholas V (elected on March 16, 1447), is so important that I can safely present him to the reader as the first improver and restorer of the city from the modern point of view. No doubt the approaching celebration of the fourth Jubilee was the main cause of his alacrity, but it did not flag or vanish after that event, as had been the case with his predecessors. Besides the general restoration of the walls and gates of the city, of the bridges Salario, Nomentano, and Tiburtino, or Mamméo, of the pontifical palace adjoining Santa Maria Maggiore, of the churches of Santo Stefano Rotondo, San Salvatore de Ossibus, San Giacomo

degli Spagnuoli, and Santa Marina, and of the castle of Sant' Angelo, Nicholas V straightened and enlarged the Via di San Celso, leading to the Ælian bridge, and ordered his architect, Bernardo Rossellino, to draw a "piano regolatore" for the improvement of the Borgo Vaticano. Rossellino must have had some notions about the Golden House of Nero, from the plan of which he seems to have derived his inspiration. The project, however (a summary of which is given by Alveri, "Roma in Ogni Stato," vol. ii, p. 115), was as beautiful as it was impracticable. The good Pope-Humanist died on the twenty-fourth day of March of the year 1455. Following the example of Augustus, he gave to the cardinals gathered around his deathbed a résumé of what he had accomplished in the eight years of his pontificate, as a pope and as a temporal ruler; and the progress made by Humanism at that time may be better appreciated from the expressions used by the leaders of the movement on the occasion of Nicholas's death. Mannetti says: "If the Immortals could shed tears over the fate of the mortals, surely the sacred Muses and the divine Camoenae would mourn over the loss of our Nicholas;" and Filelfo repeats: "Hunc Musae lacrhymant, hunc Phoebus luget Apollo." In the crypts of St. Peter's the marble effigy of Nicholas is lying on a plain stone coffin. As one looks at it under the flickering light of a torch, the thin spiritual face seems to revive; the lips seem to quiver like those of the true Humanist absorbed in the perusal of a newly discovered classic text. Nicholas, having collected and placed at the disposal of learned men so many masterpieces of Greek, Latin, and Oriental literature, has won a place of honor among the benefactors of mankind.

We come now to the Haussmann of the fifteenth century, to Pope Sixtus IV, elected on August 9, 1471, to whom

the title of "Gran Fabbricatore " the Great Builder — has been attributed by the historians of the Renaissance. It is no doubt a surprising fact that the head of one of those mendicant brotherhoods, so bitterly denounced by the Humanists as hotbeds of ignorance and superstition, should have made himself, from the sublimity of the pontifical throne, the champion of intellectual progress, and should have contributed with all his power to the revival of art and learning in the capital of the Christian world. Without preoccupying himself with the conflict of so many different aspirations, this old general of the Franciscans, this Francesco della Rovere, most humbly born at Albissola, near Savona, revealed an astonishing gift of organization, and became the protector of men of letters and artists. His best titles to fame are too well known to be described in detail: the Sixtine Chapel, the Vatican Library, the Roman University reorganized on a modern scale, the Capitoline Museum enriched with masterpieces in marble and bronze, the city improved materially and morally in a way which still commands the admiration of modern reformers, the reconstruction of twenty-five churches, considerable repairs to the castle of Sant' Angelo, to the Palazzo del Senatore, and to the fountain of Trevi, and the opening, straightening, and paving of the many streets which, from the bridge of Sant' Angelo, radiate in the direction of St. Peter's, of the Campo di Fiore, of the Palazzo di San Marco, and of the Porta del Popolo. To him we are indebted also for the hygienic reform of the Hospital of Santo Spirito, the main ward of which, three hundred and sixty-five feet long, was made capable of accommodating one thousand patients; for the restitution to its original place of the beautiful porphyry sarcophagus of Constantia, which Pope Paul II had removed to his own private palace, and which is now preserved in the

hall of the Greek Cross in the Vatican Museum; for the restoration of the equestrian bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, which stood at that time in front of the Lateran palace; for the statue of Hercules Victor, discovered in the Forum Boarium, of which he made a present to the city; and lastly for the bridge across the Tiber which still bears his name, the Ponte Sisto. Baccio Pontelli, the Pope's favorite architect, has left marks of such distinct individuality in all his works that, after the lapse of four and a half centuries, both his name and that of Pope della Rovere are still popular in Rome, even among the lower classes. Sixtus IV's "armoirie parlante,” a quercus robur (Ital. rovere), is still seen gracefully chiselled above the entrance door of our dearest churches, such as San Pietro in Vinculis, Santa Agnese outside the Walls, San Vito in Macello, Santa Maria della Pace, and, above all, San Cosimato in the Trastevere. This last-named church with its quaint interior and the adjoining monastery with its three cloisters and five gardens are among the most interesting and less known edifices of the Renaissance in Rome, and contain two masterpieces, -the grave of Cardinal Lorenzo Cibo, one of the best specimens of the Sansovinesque style, which was transferred to San Cosimato from the Cibo chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo, and changed into an altarpiece in 1684 by Cardinal Alderano; and a mural painting, attributed to Pinturicchio, the equal of which can hardly be found in Rome for simplicity of design, harmony of coloring, and delicacy of expression. This fresco, of which I give for the first time a photographic reproduction, represents the Virgin Mary between St. Francis and Sta. Chiara.

We wonder how Sixtus IV could have accomplished so much, considering the financial difficulties with which he had to contend. His reign, in fact, had begun disastrously;

to replenish the coffers of the Holy See he had been compelled to sell the magnificent collection of gems, medals, and precious vases formed by his predecessors Nicholas V and Paul II, and to pledge his own silver plate. These resources exhausted, the "Apostolic chamber" resorted to other expedients, including the levying of new and heavier taxes. We do not know the cost of his wars, of the reconstruction of so many fortresses, and of the improvements carried on in Rome, but we do know that the Pope paid at one deal the sum of forty thousand ducats for the purchase of the estate of