ivileges in the person of the Pope, and whose southern
temperament inclined them to a more sensuous and less metaphysical
conception of Christianity than the Germans or the English. The dread of
the Papal Interdict was still a reality. Though the clergy of Florence,
roused to retaliative fury, might fling back in the teeth of Sixtus such
words as _leno matris suae, adulterorum minister, diaboli vicarius_, yet
the people could not long endure 'the niggardly and imperfect rites, the
baptism sparingly administered, the extreme unction or the last
sacrament coldly vouchsafed to the chosen few, the churchyard closed
against the dead,' which, to quote the energetic language of Dean
Milman,[1] were the proper fruits of the Papal ban, however unjustly
issued and however manfully resisted.

[1] Latin Christianity, vol. vi. p. 361.

The history of the despots and the Popes, together with the analysis of
Machiavelli's political ethics, prove the demoralization of a society in
which crimes so extravagant could have their origin, and cynicism so
deliberate could be accepted as a system. Yet it remains in estimating
the general character of Italian morality to record the judgment passed
upon it by foreign nations of a different complexion. The morality of
races, as of individuals, is rarely otherwise than mixed--virtue
balancing vice and evil vitiating goodness. Still the impression
produced by Renaissance Italy upon observers from the North was almost
wholly bad. Our own ancestors returned from their Italian travels either
horrified with what they had witnessed, or else contaminated. Ascham
writes:[1] 'I was once in Italy myself; but I thank God my abode there
was but nine days; and yet I saw in that little time, in one city, more
liberty to sin than ever I heard tell of in our noble City of London in
nine years. I saw it was there as free to sin, not only without all
punishment, but also without any man's marking, as it is free in the
City of London to choose without all blame whether a man lust to wear
shoe or pantocle.' Robert Greene, who did so much to introduce the
novels of Italy into England, confesses that during his youthful travels
in the south he 'saw and practiced such villany as it is abominable to
declare.'[2] The whole of our dramatic literature corroborates these
witnesses, while the proverb, _Inglese Italianato e un diavolo
incarnato_, quoted by Sidney, Howell, Parker, Ascham, shows how
pernicious to the coarse