ple upon which these precepts of conduct are founded is not
etiquette or fashion, but respect for the sensibilities of others.
It would be difficult to compose a more philosophical treatise on
the lesser duties imposed upon us by the conditions of society--such
minute matters as the proper way to blow the nose or use the napkin,
being referred to the one rule of acting so as to cause no
inconvenience to our neighbors.

In the opening of his 'Cortegiano' Castiglione introduces us to the
court of Urbino--refined, chivalrous, witty, cultivated,
gentle--confessedly the purest and most elevated court in Italy. He
brings together the Duchess Elizabetta Gonzaga; Emilia Pia, wife of
Antonio da Montefeltro, whose wit is as keen and active as that of
Shakespeare's Beatrice; Pietro Bembo, the Ciceronian dictator of letters
in the sixteenth century; Bernardo Bibbiena, Berni's patron, the author
of 'Calandra,' whose portrait by Raphael in the Pitti enables us to
estimate his innate love of humor; Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours,
of whom the marble effigy by Michael Angelo still guards the tomb in San
Lorenzo; together with other knights and gentlemen less known to
fame--two Genoese Fregosi, Gasparo Pallavicini, Lodovico, Count of
Canossa, Cesare Gonzaga, l' Unico Aretino, and Fra Serafino the
humorist. These ladies and gentlemen hold discourse together, as was the
custom of Urbino, in the drawing-room of the duchess during four
consecutive evenings. The theme of their conversation is the Perfect
Courtier. What must that man be who deserves the name of Cortegiano,
and how must he conduct himself? The subject of discussion carries us at
once into a bygone age. No one asks now what makes the perfect courtier;
but in Italy of the Renaissance, owing to the changes from republican to
despotic forms of government which we have traced in the foregoing
pages, the question was one of the most serious importance. Culture and
good breeding, the amenities of intercourse, the pleasures of the
intellect, scarcely existed outside the sphere of courts; for one effect
of the Revival of Learning had been to make the acquisition of polite
knowledge difficult, and the proletariat was less cultivated then than
in the age of Dante. Men of ambition who desired to acquire a reputation
whether as soldiers or as poets, as politicians or as orators, came to
court and served their chosen prince in war or at the council-table, or
eve