They were afraid of being reckoned among feebler personalities; and to escape from this contempt, by the commission even of atrocities, had come to be accounted manly.

The truth, missed almost universally, was that the supreme wisdom, the paramount virility, is law-abiding honesty, the doing of right because right is right, in scorn of consequence.

Nothing appears more clearly in the memoirs of Cellini than this point, while the Italian novels are full of matter bearing on the same topic.

It is therefore ridiculous to assume that an Italian judged of men or conduct in any sense according to our standards.

Pinturicchio and Perugino thought it no shame to work for princes like the Baglioni and for Popes like Alexander VI.