hivalry that revolted against all this
brutality. Castiglione champions courtesy and kindness to women on the
highest and most beautiful ground, the spiritual value of woman's love.
Ariosto sings:

No doubt they are accurst and past all grace
That dare to strike a damsel in the face,
Or of her head to minish but a hair.

Certain works like T. Elyot's _Defence of Good Women_ and like
Cornelius Agrippa's _Nobility and Excellence of the Female Sex_,
witness a genuine appreciation of woman's worth. Some critics have
seen in the last named work a paradox, like the _Praise of Folly_, such
as was dear to the humanists. To me it seems absolutely sincere, even
when it goes so far as to proclaim that woman is as superior to man as
man is to beast and to celebrate her as the last and supreme work of
the creation.

[Sidenote: Children]

The family was far larger, on the average, in the sixteenth century
than it is now. One can hardly think of any man in this generation
with as many as a dozen children; it is possible to mention several of
that time with over twenty. Anthony Koberger, the famous Nuremberg
printer had twenty-five children, eight by his first and seventeen by
his second wife. Albert Duerer was the third of eighteen children of
the same couple, of whom apparently only three reached maturity. John
Colet, born in 1467, was the eldest of twenty-two brothers and sisters
of whom by 1499 he was the only survivor. Of course these families
were exceptional, but not glaringly so. A brood of six to twelve was a
very common occurrence.

Children were brought up harshly in many families, {511} strictly in
almost all. They were not expected to sit in the presence of their
parents, unless asked, or to speak unless spoken to. They must needs
bow and crave a blessing twice a day. Lady Jane Grey complained that
if she did not do everything as perfectly as God made the world, she
was bitterly taunted and presently so nipped and pinched by her noble
parents that she thought herself in hell. The rod was much resorted
to. And yet there was a good deal of natural affection. Few fathers
have even been better to their babies than was Luther, and he humanely
advised others to rely as much on reward as on punishment--on the apple
as on the switch--and above all not to chastise the little ones so
harshly as to make them fear or hate their parents.

The _patria potestas_ was supposed to extend, as it did in Rome, duri