The great endowments he thus admirably developed were united with a disposition represented as nearly perfect, at all events as exempted from the failings most perilous to princes. The bad passions which opportunity and indulgence have, in all ages, rendered peculiarly fatal to those whose will is law, were almost strangers to his breast. Prone to no vicious indulgences, he was ever kind and considerate, as well as just and clement. He may, in short, be regarded as that rarest of all characters, an unselfish despot,--despot as regarded the possession of absolute power, but not so in its use. The nobility had nothing to dread from his jealousy or his licentiousness; the citizens were spared oppressive imposts; the poor looked up to him as a sympathising protector. In short, we may pronounce him a magnanimous, a most accomplished, and, so far as erring man is permitted to judge, a blameless prince. Nor was the impression left upon the public mind by the glories of Urbino under Guidobaldo of a transient character. Mocenigo, Venetian envoy at the court of his grand-nephew, thus speaks of him above sixty years after his death:--"Disabled by broken health from active pursuits, he fell upon the project of forming a most brilliant court, filled with eminent men of every profession; and by rendering himself generally popular, with the co-operation of his Duchess, who emulated him in welcoming and entertaining persons of talent, he brought around him a greater number of fine spirits than any sovereign had hitherto been able to attract, and, indeed, gave to all other princes in the world the model and example of an admirably regulated court." [Illustration: _Alinari_ S. MARTIN AND S. THOMAS WITH GUIDOBALDO, DUKE OF URBINO, AND BISHOP ARRIVABENI _After the picture by Timoteo Viti in the Duomo of Urbino_] * * * * * The remaining years of the widowed Duchess were in strict accordance with a picture sketched of her by Bernardo Tasso, in the _Amadigi_:-- "She too, whose pensive aspect speaks a heart By grievous cares molested and surcharged, An anxious lot shall live; Elizabeth, Of maiden worth, in whom no blandishment Or foolish passion ere with virtue strives; Spouse of our first Duke's son, whose span cut short By cruel death, his scornful mate bereft No after tie shall bind." The circumstances of her wedded life had not been such as to render new ties distasteful to a lady of thirty-seven, described by Bembo as still elegant in figure and dress, beautifully regular in features, and with eyes and countenance of singularly winning expression. The compliment paid to her character, in that author's sketch of the Urbino sovereigns, bears upon it a stamp of truthful earnestness rarely found in his rhetorical periods.[62]