Ariosto's gentle joyousness; the dried-up precision of Baroccio's
Francesco Maria della Rovere from the sanguine joviality of Titian's
first duke of that name! One of the most acutely critical of
contemporary poets felt the change which I have indicated, and ascribed
it to the same cause. Campanella wrote as follows:

Black robes befit our age. Once they were white;
Next many-hued; now dark as Afric's Moor,
Night-black, infernal, traitorous, obscure,
Horrid with ignorance and sick with fright.
For very shame we shun all colors bright,
Who mourn our end--the tyrants we endure,
The chains, the noose, the lead, the snares, the lure--
Our dismal heroes, our souls sunk in night.

In the midst of this mirth-making there arrived on March 20 an embassy
from England, announcing Henry VIII.'s resolve to divorce himself at any
cost from Katharine of Aragon. This may well have recalled both Pope and
Emperor to a sense of the gravity of European affairs. The schism of
England was now imminent. Germany was distracted by Protestant
revolution. The armies of Caesar were largely composed of mutinous
Lutherans. Some of these soldiers had even dared to overthrow a colossal
statue of Clement VII. and grind it into powder at Bologna; and this
outrage, as it appears, went unpunished. The very troops employed in
reducing rebellious Florence were commanded by a Lutheran general; and
Clement began to fear that, after Charles's departure, the Prince of
Orange might cross the Apennines and expose the Papal person to the
insults of another captivity in Bologna. Nor were the gathering forces
of revolutionary Protestants alone ominous. Though Soliman had been
repulsed before Vienna, the Turks were still advancing on the eastern