owed this distinction rather to their comprehension of the craving of their age for culture. Thus though birth commanded respect for its own sake, a new standard of eminence had been established, and personal merit was the passport which carried the meanest into the most illustrious company. Men of all conditions and all qualifications met upon the common ground of intellectual intercourse. The subjects they discussed may be gathered from the introductions to Firenzuola's novels, from Bembo's 'Asolani' and Castiglione's 'Cortegiano,' from Guicciardini's 'Dialogue on Florence,' or from the 'Camaldolese Discourses' of Landino. Society of this kind existed nowhere else in Europe. To Italy belongs the proud priority of having invented the art of polite conversation, and anticipated the French salon after an original and urbane fashion of her own.

Under these conditions a genuine cultus of intellect sprang up in Italy. Princes and people shared a common impulse to worship the mental superiority of men who had no claim to notice but their genius. It was in the spirit of this hero-worship that the terrible Gismondo Pandolfo Malatesta transferred to Rimini the bones of Pletho, and wrote his impassioned epitaph upon the sarcophagus outside Alberti's church. The biographies of the humanists abound in stories of singular honours paid to men of parts, not only by princes who rejoiced in their society, but also by cities receiving them with public acclamation. And, as it often happens that a parody reveals the nature of the art it travesties, such light is thrown upon our subject by the vile Pietro Aretino, who, because he was a man of talent and unscrupulous in its employment, held kings and potentates beneath his satyr's hoof. It is not, however, needful to go thus far afield for instances. Some lines of our own poet Webster exactly describe the Catholicity of the Renaissance, which first obtained in Italy for men of marked abilities, and afterwards to some extent prevailed at large in Europe:—