died at Rome at the very moment when he seemed invited to enjoy all the triumph of his policy.

He died without bluster and without disquietude, disavowing nought of his past life, and relinquishing none of his designs as to the future.

He had been impassioned and skilful in the employment of moral force, whereby alone he could become master of material forces; a rare order of genius, and one which never lacks grandeur, even when the man who possesses it abuses it.

His constant thought was how he might free Italy from the barbarians; and he liked to hear himself called by the name of liberator, which was commonly given him.

One day the outspoken Cardinal Grimani said to him that, nevertheless, the kingdom of Naples, one of the greatest and richest portions of Italy, was still under the foreign yoke; whereupon Julius II., brandishing the staff on which he was leaning, said, wrathfully, "Assuredly, if Heaven had not otherwise ordained, the Neapolitans too would have shaken off the yoke which lies heavy on them." Guicciardini has summed up, with equal justice and sound judgment, the principal traits of his character: "He was a prince," says the historian, "of incalculable courage and firmness; full of boundless imaginings which would have brought him headlong to ruin if the respect borne to the Church, the dissensions of princes and the conditions of the times, far more than his own moderation and prudence, had not supported him; he would have been worthy of higher glory had he been a laic prince, or had it been in order to elevate the Church in spiritual rank and by processes of peace that he put in practice the diligence and zeal he displayed for the purpose of augmenting his temporal greatness by the arts of war.
Nevertheless he has left, above all his predecessors, a memory full of fame and honor, especially amongst those men who can no longer call things by their right names or appreciate them at their true value, and who think that it is the duty of the sovereign-pontiffs to extend, by means of arms and the blood of Christians, the power of the Holy See rather than to wear themselves out in setting good examples of a Christian's life and in reforming manners and customs pernicious to the salvation of souls--that aim of aims for which they assert that Christ has appointed them His vicars on earth." The death of Julius II.