2 LIFE AND EXPERIENCES CHAP. 



educated as he was, and in a place at that time wholly 

 devoted to commerce, he should have made for himself 

 a European reputation, and should have laid the found- 

 ation of a new era in the history of the Renaissance. 

 He is, of course, best known by his Lives of Lorenzo 

 de Medici and Leo X. (see portrait, page i). Yet, 

 singular to say, he never visited Italy, but obtained 

 the necessary information and local colouring by cor- 

 respondence with a resident who sent him Italian 

 books. He spoke Italian, but with an English pro- 

 nunciation ; and hence Italians who came to visit him 

 could scarcely understand what he said. A few years 

 ago a relative of mine asked me if I knew the number 

 of the house in the street in Florence in which my 

 grandfather lived when he wrote the Life of Lorenzo, 

 as a distinguished Catholic prelate was about to visit 

 that city and wished to have a tablet placed on the 

 "Casa Roscoe." 



The father of William Roscoe was the landlord of 

 a small inn or public-house standing in Mount Plea- 

 sant in Liverpool. There was a market-garden at 

 the back of the house, and I have heard that my 

 grandfather, when a boy, carried potatoes on hjs head 

 to market for his father. By his energy and persever- 

 ance he had in the year 1799 already accumulated 

 sufficient wealth to purchase the Allerton estate, a 

 valuable property lying about six miles from Liverpool. 

 The house was originally built in the reign of James I., 

 but about the middle of the eighteenth century a part 

 of the structure had been taken down and the new 

 handsome stone edifice (see the accompanying plate 

 showing the fine old tulip tree) erected in its place. 



The situation was a romantic one, the house 

 being built on the shores of the Mersey with a 

 charming view of the Welsh hills in the distance, and 



