of material aggrandizement, glory, gain, and greatness. No one thought
of judging men by their motives but by their practice; they were not
regarded as moral but as political beings, responsible, that is to say,
to no law but the obligation of success. Crimes which we regard as
horrible were then commended as magnanimous, if it could be shown that
they were prompted by a firm will and had for their object a deliberate
end. Machiavelli and Paolo Giovio, for example, both praise the massacre
at Sinigaglia as a masterstroke of art, without uttering a word in
condemnation of its perfidy. Machiavelli sneers at Gianpaolo Baglioni
because he had not the courage to strangle his guest Julius II. and to
crown his other crimes with this signal act of magnanimity. What virtue
had come to mean in the Italian language we have seen already. The one
quality which every one despised was simplicity, however this might be
combined with lofty genius and noble aims. It was because Soderini was
simple and had a good heart that Machiavelli wrote the famous epigram--

La notte che morì Pier Soderini
L' alma n' andò dell' inferno alla bocca;
E Pluto le gridò: Anima sciocca,
Che inferno? va nel limbo de' bambini.

The night that Peter Soderini died,
His soul flew down unto the mouth of hell:
'What? Hell for you? You silly spirit!' cried
The fiend: 'your place is where the babies dwell.'

As of old in Corcyra, so now in Italy, 'guilelessness, which is the
principal ingredient of genuine nobleness, was laughed down, and
disappeared.'[1] What men feared was not the moral verdict of society,
pronouncing them degraded by vicious or violent acts, but the