uch subtlety and vice as rendered the retainers of Italian nobles
perilous to order. He paints the broad portrait of a muscular and
insolently insular people, untainted by the evils of corrupt
civilization. Mounting higher in the social scale, Bruno renders
deserved homage to the graceful and unaffected manners of young English
noblemen, from whom he singles Sidney out as the star of cultivated
chivalry.[89]

[Footnote 88: The 'Cena delle Ceneri,' _Op. It._ vol. i. pp. 137-151].

[Footnote 89: Signor Berti conjectures that Bruno may have met Sidney
first at Milan. But Bruno informs us that he did not become acquainted
with him till he came to London: 'Tra' quali e tanto conosciuto, per
fama prima quanbo eravamo in Milano et in Francia, e poi per experienza
or che siamo ne la sua patria' (_Op. It._ vol. i. p. 145).]

What he says about the well-born youth of England, shows that the flower
of our gentlefolk delighted Southern observers by their mixture of
simplicity and sweetness with good breeding and sound sense. For the
ladies of England he cannot find words fair enough to extol the beauties
of their persons and the purity of their affections. Elizabeth herself
he calls a goddess, _diva_, using phrases which were afterwards recited
in the terms of his indictment before the Inquisition. What pleased him
most in England, was the liberty of speech and thought he there
enjoyed.[90] Society was so urbane, government was so unsuspicious, that
a man could venture to call things by their proper names and speak his
heart out without reserve. That Bruno's panegyric was not prompted by
any wish to flatter national vanity, is proved by the hard truths he
spoke about the grossness of the people, and by his sarcasms on Oxford
pedants. He also ventured to condemn in no unmeasured terms some customs
which surprised him in domestic intercourse. He drew, for instance, a
really gruesome picture of the loving-cup, as it passed round the table,
tasted by a mixed assemblage.[91]

A visit paid by Bruno to Oxford forms a curious episode in his English
experiences. He found that university possessed by pedants and ignorant
professors of the old learning. 'Men of choice,' he calls them,
'trailing their long velvet gowns, this one arrayed with two bright
chains of gold around his neck, that one, good heavens! with such a
valuable hand--twelve rings upon two fingers, giving him the look of
some rich jeweler.'[92] These excellent dons, blest in