Nor were there any hills from which salvation might be looked for.  Philosophy, poetry, science, expressed themselves in terms of materialism.  Faith and hope are ever the last survivors in the life of a man or of a nation.  But in Italy these brave comforters were at their latest breath.  It is perhaps unfair to accept in full the judgment of Northern travellers.  The conditions, training, needs of England and Germany were different.  In these countries courage was a necessity, and good faith a paying policy.  Subtlety could do little against a two-handed sword in the hands of an angry or partially intoxicated giant.  Climate played its part as well as culture, and the crude pleasures and vices of the North seemed fully as loathsome to the refined Italian as did the tortuous policy and the elaborate infamies of the South to their rough invaders.  Alone, perhaps, among the nations of Europe the Italians had never understood or practised chivalry, save in such select and exotic schools as the Casa Gioiosa under Vittorino da Feltre at Mantua.  The oath of Arthur’s knights would have seemed to them mere superfluity of silliness. Onore connoted credit, reputation, and prowess. Virtu, which may be roughly translated as mental ability combined with personal daring, set the standard and ruled opinion.  ‘Honour in the North was subjective:  Onore in Italy objective.’  Individual liberty, indeed, was granted in full to all, at the individual’s risk.  The love of beauty curbed grossness and added distinction.  Fraud became an art and force a science.  There is liberty for all, but for the great ones there is licence.  And when the day of trial comes, it is the Churchmen and the Princes who can save neither themselves nor man, nor thing that is theirs.  To such a world was Machiavelli born.  To whom should he turn?  To the People?  To the Church?  To the Princes and Despots?  But hear him:—­

’There shall never be found any good mason, which will beleeve to be able to make a faire image of a peece of marble ill hewed, but verye well of a rude peece.  Our Italian Princes beleeved, before they tasted the blowes of the outlandish warre, that it should suffice a Prince to know by writinges, how to make a subtell aunswere, to write a goodly letter, to shewe in sayinges, and in woordes, witte and promptenesse, to know how to canvas a fraude, to decke themselves with precious stones and gold, to sleepe and to eate with greater glory then other:  To kepe many lascivious persons about them, to governe themselves with their subjects, covetously and proudely:  To roote in idlenes, to give the degrees of the exercise of warre for good will, to dispise if any should have shewed them any laudable waie, minding that their wordes should bee aunswers of oracles:  nor the sely wretches were not aware that they prepared themselves to be a pray to whome so ever should assaulte them.  Hereby grew then in the thousand fowre hundred and nintie and fowre