Fourth Lecture by Dr. Sandys

Dr. J. E. Sandys, of Cambridge, England, delivered the fourth of the Lane lectures in the Fogg Lecture Room last night on "The Academies of Florence, Venice, Naples and Rome."

The academies of the classic type, Dr. Sandys said, included primarily those of Florence, Venice, Naples, and Rome. The founding of the Academy of Florence by Cosimo dei Medici was one of the incidental and unexpected consequences of the Council of Florence, held in 1439. Foremost among the members of the academy was Politian, the general purport of whose poems may be gathered from a rendering of a single couplet: "O happy violets, which that hand hath prest,--

Hand that robs hapless me of all my rest."

The academy of Venice was founded in 1500, and was primarily an academy of Hellenists. Greek was spoken at its meetings and Greek names were adopted by its Italian members.

The Academy of Naples arose out of social gatherings, the centre of which was the poet Antonio of Palermo. The Academy of Rome, which owed its origin to Pomponius Laetus, flourished until 1468. It was then suppressed for a time, but was revived again under Pope Sixtus IV and flourished in the age of Leo X, only to be overwhelmed finally in the general rain which accompanied the sack of Rome in 1527 by the Spanish and German troops of the Emperor Charles V.

The fifth lecture of the series, on "The Homes of Humanism," will be given in the Fogg Lecture Room Monday evening at 8 o'clock.