imported from abroad the scanty merchandise which could be
imported at all. About half of it usually fell into the hands of
highwaymen before it reached the city, and the price of luxuries was
proportionately high. Such men, of course, lived well, though there was
a wide difference between their mode of life and that of the nobles, not
so much in matters of abundance and luxury, as in principle. The chief
rule was that the wives and daughters of the middle class did a certain
amount of housekeeping work, whereas the wives and daughters of the
nobles did not. The burgher's wife kept house herself, overlooked the
cooking, and sometimes cooked a choice dish with her own hands, and
taught her daughters to do so. A merchant might have a considerable
retinue of men, for his service and protection, and they carried staves
when they accompanied their master abroad, and lanterns at night. But
the baron's men were men-at-arms,--practically soldiers,--who wore his
colours, and carried swords and pikes, and lit the way for their lord at
night with torches, always the privilege of the nobles. As a matter of
fact, they were generally the most dangerous cutthroats whom the
nobleman was able to engage, highwaymen, brigands and outlaws, whom he
protected against the semblance of the law; whereas the merchant's
train consisted of honest men who worked for him in his warehouse, or
they were countrymen from his farms, if he had any.

It is not easy to give any adequate idea of those great mediaeval
establishments, except by their analogy with the later ones that came
after them. They were enormous in extent, and singularly uncomfortable
in their internal arrangement.

A curious book, published in 1543, and therefore at the first
culmination of the Renascence, has lately been reprinted. It is entitled
'Concerning the management of a Roman Nobleman's Court,' and was
dedicated to 'The magnificent and Honourable Messer Cola da Benevento,'
forty years after the death of the Borgia Pope and during the reign of
Paul the Third, Farnese, who granted the writer a copyright for ten
years. The little volume is full of interesting details, and the
attendant gentlemen and servants enumerated give some idea of what
according to the author was not considered extravagant for a nobleman of
the sixteenth century. There were to be two chief chamberlains, a
general controller of the estates, a chief steward, four chaplains, a
master of the horse, a private s