Eighth, were projects which, at that time, fascinated all the
master-spirits of Italy. The magnificent vision delighted the
great but ill-regulated mind of Julius. It divided with
manuscripts and sauces, painters, and falcons, the attention of
the frivolous Leo. It prompted the generous treason of Morone. It
imparted a transient energy to the feeble mind and body of the
last Sforza. It excited for one moment an honest ambition in the
false heart of Pescara. Ferocity and insolence were not among the
vices of the national character. To the discriminating cruelties
of politicians, committed for great ends on select victims, the
moral code of the Italians was too indulgent. But though they
might have recourse to barbarity as an expedient, they did not
require it as a stimulant. They turned with loathing from the
atrocity of the strangers who seemed to love blood for its own
sake, who, not content with subjugating, were impatient to
destroy, who found a fiendish pleasure in razing magnificent
cities, cutting the throats of enemies who cried for quarter, or
suffocating an unarmed population by thousands in the caverns to
which it had fled for safety. Such were the cruelties which daily
excited the terror and disgust of a people among whom, till
lately, the worst that a soldier had to fear in a pitched battle
was the loss of his horse and the expense of his ransom. The
swinish intemperance of Switzerland, the wolfish avarice of
Spain, the gross licentiousness of the French, indulged in
violation of hospitality, of decency, of love itself, the wanton
inhumanity which was common to all the invaders, had made them
objects of deadly hatred to the inhabitants of the Peninsula. The
wealth which had been accumulated during centuries of prosperity
and repose was rapidly melting away. The intellectual superiority
of the oppressed people only rendered them more keenly sensible