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ising and reforming a vast and barbarous empire, will convince every one, that the czar Peter (with such justice styled THE GREAT) was a being so gifted and endowed, as has but rarely been permitted to appear in mortal mould--He died of a strangury, caused by an imposthume in the bladder, Jan. the twentyeighth, 1725, aged fifty-three.

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LEO THE TENTH,

Born at Florence in December 1475, was the second son of Lorenzo de Medici, surnamed the Magnificent, and was in baptism called John. He was a Pontiff, whose history is intimately blended with that of literature and the reformation; but of whose life scarcely any sketch will be deemed satisfactory, after the very luminous and interesting work of Roscoe. Being destined by his powerful father for the church, he was promoted before he knew what promotion meant; received the tonsure at the

age

of seven years; then two rich abbacies; and, before he ceased to be a boy, was invested with other preferments to the number of twenty-nine; and thus early imbibed that taste for aggrandisement, which never afterwards left him.

Upon the accession of Innocent VIII. to the pontificate, John, then only thirteen years old, was nominated to the dignity of a cardinal: and, having thus secured his promotion, his father began to think of his education. On his nomination to the cardinalate, it was made a condition that he should spend three years at the university of Pisa, in professional studies, before he was formally invested with the purple. In 1492 this solemn act took place, and he imme

diately took up his residence at Rome as one of the sacred college. Circumstances rendered his retirement to Florence expedient some time after his father's death; but, about 1500, he again became an inhabitant of the papal capital. In 1505, he was appointed by Pope Julius II. to the government of Perugia; and entrusted with the supreme direction of the papal army in the Holy League against the French in 1511, with the title of Legate of Bologna. Being made prisoner, the year following, at the bloody battle of Ravenna, he was conveyed to Milan; but effecting his escape to Florence, he remained in that city till the death of Julius II. in 1513, when he was elected Pope in his stead, in the thirty-eighth year of his age:

He now assumed the title of Leo X., and ascended the throne amidst very general manifestations of the public good will. Having secured external tranquillity, he consulted the interests of literature by numerous examples of munificent patronage. He restored to its former splendour the Roman gymnasium, or university; and founded a college of noble Grecian youths at Rome, for the purpose of editing Greek authors: a Greek press was also established by him in that city. Public notice was circulated throughout Europe, that all persons who possessed MSS. of ancient authors would be liberally rewarded on bringing or sending them to the

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