commerce, governed by law, and passionately attached to
literature, everything was done by superiority and intelligence.
Their very wars, more pacific than the peace of their neighbours,
required rather civil than military qualifications. Hence, while
courage was the point of honour in other countries, ingenuity
became the point of honour in Italy.

From these principles were deduced, by processes strictly
analogous, two opposite systems of fashionable morality. Through
the greater part of Europe, the vices which peculiarly belong to
timid dispositions, and which are the natural defence Of
weakness, fraud, and hypocrisy, have always been most
disreputable. On the other hand, the excesses of haughty and
daring spirits have been treated with indulgence, and even with
respect. The Italians regarded with corresponding lenity those
crimes which require self-command, address, quick observation,
fertile invention, and profound knowledge of human nature.

Such a prince as our Henry the Fifth would have been the idol of
the North. The follies of his youth, the selfish ambition of his
manhood, the Lollards roasted at slow fires the prisoners
massacred on the field of battle, the expiring lease of
priestcraft renewed for another century, the dreadful legacy of a
causeless and hopeless war bequeathed to a people who had no
interest in its event, everything is forgotten but the victory of
Agincourt. Francis Sforza, on the other hand, was the model of
Italian heroes. He made his employers and his rivals alike his
tools. He first overpowered his open enemies by the help of
faithless allies; he then armed himself against his allies with
the spoils taken from his enemies. By his incomparable dexterity,