Such are the normal and necessary results as they lie developed and palpable before our eyes, of that system which was inaugurated at the period to which the subject of these pages belongs. But let ascetic theologians console themselves, and defend the issues of their handywork, as they may, it is undeniable, that, be they as sincere as they will, all such considerations are but after–thoughts. The production of a society vowed to apostolic poverty and heedlessness of the morrow, was not the object which the sixteenth century popes, and those misguided rulers who played into their hands, had in view. They intended to bring about very different issues. Yet this, which we see, was the only one in the long run possible, as the upshot of their doings. Divine providence so over–ruled the matter, quite in accordance with divine precedent, having very irreversibly laid down the law for the regulation of all such cases, at the time of man's first creation. Previously to the inauguration of this fatal policy, the rule of the earlier dukes of Ferrara of the house of Este had aimed at, and in very considerable degree attained, quite other results. Beginning with old Borso the first duke, who was invested with that dignity in 1471, and who left behind him so good a name, that when in after and worser times, men grumbled in Ferrara,[19] they would say, "Ah, 'tis not now as in Duke Borso's days," down to his great nephew Hercules the Second, who ruled the duchy at the period to which our subject belongs; the Ferrarese princes had been very favourable specimens of the Italian sovereigns of those days.