At that time the city of Rome was an enchanting environment for an artistic nature.

The boundless immorality of her great past, speaking so eloquently from innumerable monuments of the pagan and Christian worlds; her majesty and holy calm; the sudden breaking loose of furious passions--all this is beyond the imaginative power of modern men, just as is the wickedly secular nature of the papacy and the spirit of the Renaissance which swept over these ruins.

We are unable to comprehend in their entirety the soul-activities of this great race, which was both creative and destructive.

For to the same feeling which impelled men to commit great crimes do we owe the great works of art of the Renaissance.
In those days evil, as well as good, was in the _grand style_.

Alexander VI displayed himself to the world, for whose opinion he had supreme contempt, as shamelessly and fearlessly as did Nero.
The Renaissance, owing to the violent contrasts which it presents, now naively and now in full consciousness of their incongruity, and also on account of the fiendish traits by which it is characterized, will always constitute one of the greatest psychologic problems in the history of civilization.
All virtues, all crimes, all forces were set in motion by a feverish yearning for immaterial pleasures, beauty, power, and immortality.