Comparison of this treatment with that in _Huon of Bordeaux_ points up the literary and social changes which have intervened. Nothing could testify more clearly to the altered role of religion than the absence of moral judgment and the sex change through benevolent magic instead of divine intervention. This and the verbal echo of Ovid throughout Flordespine’s long lament (only partially quoted above) show to what extent the Revival of Learning had bred familiarity with classical word and temper. There is also here a greater psychological subtlety, natural to growing humanism. Though Flordespine’s passion is roused by her mistaking Bradamante for a man and satisfied only by sex-reversal, her initial emotion is unaltered by her enlightenment, and the brother whom she accepts is so feminine in both appearance and action that an entire household is deceived for weeks. Thus the Spanish princess exhibits definite psychological variance. It is interesting that the knightly Bradamante remains unmoved throughout and that Flordespine, the petite, impulsive, eminently feminine member of the pair, takes the initiative in the whole business. Sir Philip Sidney’s pastoral _Arcadia_, circulated among friends in 1580 though not published till a decade later, shows a similar relation to both medieval and classical sources. Here, as in the second part of Ariosto’s episode, the hero masquerades as an Amazon, in order to gain access to a princess whose family is living in pastoral seclusion for political reasons. The heroine’s father is completely taken in and himself conceives a passion for the handsome stranger. His wife, several decades his junior, is only briefly deceived but holds her peace because she is similarly smitten. Thanks to the separate jealous machinations of these two, all the hero’s efforts to reveal his secret to his love are balked, but within a few weeks his passion has communicated itself to the girl. And now we have the moral scruples which regularly distinguish English from continental literature. They are given vividly in Sidney’s own words: