But perhaps the most extraordinary and interesting fact of Lucrezia's history, is that after her marriage with Alphonso, not only was her life blameless, but her conduct was such as to merit and secure her high–minded husband's affection and esteem, and in all respects to do honour to her station. Her marriage with Alphonso therefore divides, as by an abruptly and suddenly drawn line, the life of Lucrezia into two portions, the earlier all black with atrocities and abominations unspeakable, the latter shining with purity and many noble virtues. Such a statement has been deemed to involve an absolute moral impossibility; and Roscoe has been induced by the consideration of it, to attempt a denial of the charges which have made Lucrezia Borgia's name a by–word of infamy. "If the Ethiopian cannot change his skin," he writes,[26] "nor the leopard his spots, how are we to conceive it possible that a person, who had during so many years of her life been sunk into the lowest depths of guilt and infamy could at once emerge to respectability and virtue? The history of mankind furnishes no instances of such a rapid change." But Roscoe's elaborate though weak defence signally breaks down. It would extend what has already undesignedly assumed the proportions of a digression far too much to enter into an examination of the historical evidence on the subject. It will be sufficient to observe, that Roscoe's "chivalrous" attempt, as somebody with infinite absurdity somewhere calls it, was abundantly demolished by the "Edinbro' Review," January, 1806, at the time. And further evidence than was then accessible to the reviewer, has since been made available to establish the historical certainty, that the earlier portion of Lucrezia's life was in truth all that it has been ordinarily supposed to have been. On the correctness of the account of the latter portion, as stated above, no doubt has ever been cast. So that we in reality have this whitewashed–black–a–moor phenomenon before us, to make of it what we may. Gibbon disposes[27] of the matter by observing, that "perhaps the youth of Lucrezia had been seduced by example; perhaps she had been satiated by pleasure; perhaps she was awed by the authority of her new parent and husband," Alphonso, and his father Hercules. But the moral philosopher will hardly deem any of these suppositions a satisfactory explanation of the facts before him. And a more serious consideration of them will perhaps lead him to the conclusion, that whatever of strangeness or novelty they may present, is rather matter for the historian's study than for his own. [Sidenote: LUCREZIA BORGIA.]