THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
neighbourhood of Villa Medici there are even yet 
traces of the witch-traditions of the Middle Ages ; 
on the northern slope of the hill, the subterranean 
chambers of the Roman theatre are still called 
by the country people the Witches’ Caves (Bacche 
delle Fate). 
Among these friends Lorenzo passed perhaps 
his happiest hours, discussing philosophy and 
politics, and writing verses and sonnets. Poliziano 
speaks of these visits in his poem “ Rusticus:” 
“Such was my song, with idle thought 
In Fiesole’s cool grottoes wrought, 
Where from the Medici’s retreat 
On that famed mount, beneath my feet 
The Tuscan city I survey, 
And winding Arno, far. away. 
Here sometime at happy leisure, 
Bounteous Lorenzo takes his pleasure 
His friends to entertain and feast 
(Of Pheebus’ sons, himself not least). 
Offering a haven, safe and free, 
To storm-tossed ships of Poesy.” 
The following sonnet on a present of violets, 
by Lorenzo himself, shows that he was really 
a poet 5 
“ Not from bright cultured gardens, where sweet airs 
Steal softly round the rose’s terraced home, 
Into thy white hand, Lady, have we come; 
Deep in dark dingles are our wild wood lairs, 
Where once came Venus racked with aching cares, 
Seeking Adonis through our leafy gloam : 
Hither and thither vainly doth she roam, 
Till her bare foot a felon bramble tears. 
To catch the sacred blood that from above 
Dripped off the leaves, our small white flowers we spread: 
Whence came that purple hue that now is ours. 
Not summer airs, nor rills from far springs led 
Have nursed our beauty; but by tears of love 
Our roots were watered, love-sighs formed our flowers.” 
Villa Medici had, however, a darker association 
for Lorenzo. It was when he was staying here 
as a youth, with his brother Giuliano, that the Pazzi 
conspiracy was formed against him. It had been 
the intention of the conspirators to commit the 
murder when they went to dine with Lorenzo at 
Fiesole, and it was only after they found that 
Giuliano would be absent, that they transferred their 
( 98 
attempt to the cathedral; the lifting of the Host 
was to give the signal. Giuliano was murdered, and 
Lorenzo, who escaped by his coolness and presence 
of mind, took a terrible vengeance on the assassins. 
The villa, which was built by Michelozzo 
Michelozzi for Lorenzo’s ‘father, has been  trans- 
formed into an eighteenth century house, but the 
arched rooms are there; there must always have 
been the terrace in front, and the glory of 
Villa Medici is its view. It stands high upon the 
hillside, with the ground dropping swiftly below, 
and there lies the whole landscape—Florence 
spreads over the valley, the low violet hills bound 
the horizon, Arno winds like a white ribbon, bells 
come soft through the delicious mountain air. 
Why does the place bring those men so vividly 
before one, as one gazes at the blue distance over 
which time has passed unchanged, at the olives 
making a silver tracery against it, at the cypresses, 
velvet spires as green as when Benozzo Gozzoli 
set his palette? From this spot Lorenzo and 
Giuliano rode down on that April day to the 
Duomo, which they could see far away in the 
valley, on that expedition from which one ot 
them was never to come back. Here they 
gathered those they loved around them, in the 
intervals of that thronging life, and we know they 
felt that thought and leisure and friendship were 
still the best things it had to give. 
“Once more the world’s great age begins anew, 
Once more the blossoms of that marvellous spring unclose.” 
As the sun sinks behind the purple Carrara 
mountains we picture the group who once often 
watched it from this terrace: the Magnificent 
Medici, dark, saturnine, sympathetic, the man of 
marvellous tact and variety, with his brilliant 
friends, full of wit and grave discourse and social 
gossip, the music of Plato or Homer sounding in 
their ears. ‘Then when the stream of thought 
begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a 
bran-new canto of Morgante, or a singing-boy is 
bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo’s 
last-named ba//ata.” 
