CARDINAL BEMBO AND HIS VILLA 
“ Cur valle permutem Sabina Divitias operosiores ? ” 
Horace. 
Pietro Bembo was a typical Italian humanist. His 
whole life was governed by two ruling passions the 
love of letters and of natural beauty. He was ambi¬ 
tious and greedy of gain, never tired of accumulating 
lucrative posts and rich benefices, but wealth and 
dignities in his eyes were only means to the end in 
view, steps in the ladder to the attainment of that 
blessed leisure which was the most desirable thing on 
earth. So he undertook hard and distasteful work, 
and toiled in law-courts and offices, that he might gain 
the power to be idle and to enjoy Nature and his 
beloved books in undisturbed peace. And since the 
only way in which a poor scholar could obtain inde¬ 
pendence and freedom from care was by entering the 
service of some noble patron, he went to the Court of 
Urbino with only forty ducats in his pocket, and, in 
spite of the remonstrances of his relatives and friends, 
remained there several years. “Let them say what 
they choose,” he wrote to his brother at Venice, they 
are fools who think themselves wise and imagine that 
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