272. With vacillating, but steadily prevailing effort, the Florentines maintained this life and character for full half a century.
You will please now look at my staff of the year 1300,[1] adding the names of Dante and Orcagna, having each their separate masterful or prophetic function.
That is Florence's contribution to the intellectual work of the world during these years of justice. Now, the promise of Christianity is given with the lesson from the fleur-de-lys: Seek ye first the royalty of God, and His justice, "and all these things," material wealth, "shall be added unto you." It is a perfectly clear, perfectly literal,—never failing and never unfulfilled promise. There is no instance in the whole cycle of history of its not being accomplished,—fulfilled to the uttermost, with full measure, pressed down, and running over.
273. Now hear what Florence was, and what wealth she had got by her justice. In the year 1330, before she fell, she had within her walls a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, of whom all the men—(laity)—between the ages of fifteen and seventy, were ready at an instant
- ↑ In my second Lecture on Engraving; Ariad. Flor., § 52.
