was to establish there and then practical Christianity such as Christ taught, so that Florence might become the model city of the world. Men may scoff and say this was the impossible dream of a madman. But it is better to aim too high and fail than to accept, as many people do, a low standard because it is too difficult and too much trouble to fight against a vicious public opinion.
The immediate effect of Savonarola's teaching was that the citizens of Florence began suddenly to lead lives of strict simplicity, renouncing frivolity, feasting, and gambling, and even dressing with austere plainness, discarding their jewels and ornaments. The carnival of 1497 was celebrated by "a bonfire of the vanities" in the great square of the town. Priceless manuscripts and precious folios were hurled from the windows into the street and collected in carts with other articles by troops of boys dressed in white. A huge pyramid twenty feet high was erected in the Piazza. At the bottom of it were stacked masks and dresses and wigs; on the step above, mirrors, puffs, curling-tongs, hair-pins, powder and paint. Still higher were lutes, mandolines, cards, chessmen, balls, dice; then came drawings and priceless pictures and statues in wood and colored wax of gods and heroes. Towering higher than anything else, on the top a figure of Satan was enthroned, a monstrous puppet, filled with gunpowder and sulphur, with goat's legs and a hairy skin. At nightfall a great procession
