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In 1494 Charles VIII. of France crossed the Alps to assert his title to Naples, where a branch of the royal family of Aragon ruled. His successor raised up against him the League of Venice, of which Ferdinand was a member. Charles withdrew, leaving a viceroy, in 1495. Ferdinand forthwith invaded Calabria.

Into it Charles entered on the 17th of November, 1494, at the head of all his army. His reception on the part of officials and populace was really magnificent. Negotiation was resumed.

On the 20th of January 1494 there was a heavy fall of snow in Florence, and Piero sent for the young sculptor to model a colossal snow-man in the courtyard of his palace.

What, indeed, is the Teatro Farnese but a symbol of those hollow principalities which the despot and the stranger built in Italy after the fatal date of 1494, when national enthusiasm and political energy were expiring in a blaze of art, and when the Italians as a people had ceased to be; but when the phantom of their former life, surviving in high works of beauty, was still superb by reason of imperishable style!

During two years Bayard remained with the garrison at Aire, and made great progress in all warlike training. At the end of this time, in the year 1494, Charles VIII. undertook his first expedition to Italy, and as the company of the Count de Ligny was commanded to join him, young Bayard looked forward with great delight to his first taste of real warfare.

Of gold there was little, of spices none. He wrote to his sovereigns in January, 1494, asking for the supplies needed; and he offered, pending the discovery of more precious things, to defray expenses by shipping to Spain some of the island natives, "who are a wild people fit for any work, well proportioned and very intelligent, and who when they have got rid of their cruel habits to which they have been accustomed will be better than any other kind of slaves."

He promptly assumed the functions of historian of the new epoch whose dawn he presaged, and in the month of October, 1494, he began the series of letters to be known as the Ocean Decades, continuing his labours, with interruptions, until 1526, the year of his death.

The storm which suddenly broke upon Alexander did not disturb Lucretia, for on the eighth of June, 1494, she and her spouse entered Pesaro. In a pouring rain, which interrupted the reception festivities, she took possession of the palace of the Sforza, which was now to be her home.

=The Rood Screen=, according to Sir Gilbert Scott, is of a date a few years earlier than 1494, but, if so, it has taken the place of another, which is mentioned in the Fabric Rolls as early as 1408. The general design is that of an arched doorway with four large niches on either side, and a tier of twenty-four small niches over all.

This was either Anne of Beaujeu, or the widow of the Admiral Louis de Bourbon. Bartholomew was living in Paris when he heard of his brother's great discovery. He had now been appointed by the Spanish sovereigns to command a fleet of three vessels, which had been sent out to provision the new colony. He had sailed from Cadiz on the thirtieth of April, 1494, and he arrived at Isabella on St.