The Pope remained until late in February to settle his new conquest, keeping the Duke near him as a friend and counsellor, and on the 3rd of March, in defiance of the inclement season, repeated his visit to Urbino for one day, with a smaller company, while on his return to Rome. His host, after conveying him as far as Cagli on the 5th, pleaded his constitutional malady, and returned home with the Prefect. As this was the period selected by Count Castiglione for portraying the ducal court, it will be well to pause for a little, and consider the representation he has left us of it. CHAPTER XXI The Court of Urbino, its manners and its stars. The taste for philosophy, letters, and arts, and the patronage of their professors which Cosimo de' Medici and his son Lorenzo the Magnificent had introduced among the merchant-rulers of Florence, were, as we have already seen, adopted by several petty sovereigns of the Peninsula, but chiefly by those in the district of Romagna.[26] Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta was the first to engraft these fruits of peace upon a military despotism, which his restless ambition and fierce temper ever rendered the torment of his neighbours, and the scourge of his people. The d'Este of Ferrara, the Sforza of Pesaro, but, above all, Duke Federigo of Urbino, improving upon his example, had shown how mental cultivation might be brought to modify, or, as the Latin idiom has it, to humanise, without enervating, a martial character. The reign of Guidobaldo was peculiarly favourable to the development of this new and attractive principle; for though enabled partially to sustain the fame in arms which his father had bequeathed him, his feeble health gave him greater opportunity for the cultivation of letters, and for the society of the learned, to which he was naturally partial. Seconded by the sympathies of his estimable Duchess, his palace became a resort of the first literary and political celebrities of the day, who during the few years that succeeded his restoration, diffused over it a tone of refinement elsewhere unrivalled. To fix for the contemplation of posterity those graceful but transient images which flitted across this gay and brilliant society was the pleasing task undertaken by Castiglione,[*27] one of its most polished ornaments. [Footnote 26: See above, ch. viii., ix., x.] [Footnote *27: The following is a short bibliography of _Il Cortegiano_, and of works relating to it:-- SALVADORI, _Il Cortegiano_ (Firenze, 1884). CIAN, _Il Cortegiano_ (Firenze, 1894). OPDYCKE, _The Book of the Courtier_ (New York, 1901). BOTTARI, _Studio su B.C. e il suo Libro_ (Pisa, 1874). LUZIO E RENIER, _Mantova e Urbino_ (Torino, 1893). CIAN, in _Giornale Stor. d. Lett. It._, vol. XV. fasc. 43 e 44. CIAN, _Un Codice ignoto di Rime volgari app. a B.C._ in _Giornale cit._, vol. XXXIV., p. 297, XXXV., p. 53. SERASSI, _Lettere_, 2 vols. (Padova, 1769-71). RENIER, _Notizia di Lettere ined. di B.C._ (Torino, 1889).