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:-- Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds: In the trenches for the soldier; in the wakeful study For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea For men of our profession: of all which Arise and spring up honour. The virtue here described bears the Italian sense of _virtù_, the Latin _virtus_, the Greek [Greek: aretê], that which makes a man. It might display itself in a thousand ways; but all alike brought honour, and honour every man was bound to seek. The standard whereby the Italians judged this virtue was æsthetical rather than moral. They were too dazzled by brilliant achievement to test it in the crucible of ethics. This is the true key to Machiavelli's critique of Castruccio Castracane, Gianpaolo Baglioni, Cesare Borgia, and Piero Soderini. In common with his race, he was fascinated by character, and attached undue importance to the force that made men seek success even through crime.