n in humbler offices of state. To be able, therefore, to conduct
himself with dignity, to know how to win the favor of his master and to
secure the good-will of his peers, to retain his personal honor and to
make himself respected without being hated, to inspire admiration and to
avoid envy, to outshine all honorable rivals in physical exercises and
the craft of arms, to maintain a credable equipage and retinue, to be
instructed in the arts of polite intercourse, to converse with ease and
wit, to be at home alike in the tilting-yard, the banquet-hall, the
boudoir, and the council-chamber, to understand diplomacy, to live
before the world and yet to keep a fitting privacy and distance,--these
and a hundred other matters were the climax and perfection of the
culture of a gentleman. Courts being now the only centers in which it
was possible for a man of birth and talents to shine, it followed that
the perfect courtier and the perfect gentleman were synonymous terms.
Castiglione's treatise may therefore be called an essay on the character
of the true gentleman as he appeared in Italy. Eliminating all qualities
that are special to any art or calling, he defines those essential
characteristics which were requisite for social excellence in the
sixteenth century. It is curious to observe how unchangeable are the
laws of real politeness and refinement. Castiglione's courtier is, with
one or two points of immaterial difference, a modern gentleman, such as
all men of education at the present day would wish to be.

The first requisite in the ideal courtier is that he must be noble. The
Count of Canossa, who proposed the subject of debate, lays down this as
an axiom. Gaspar Pallavicino denies the necessity[1] But after a lively
discussion, his opinion is overruled, on the ground that, although the
gentle virtues may be found among people of obscure origin, yet a man
who intends to be a courtier must start with the prestige of noble
birth. Next he must be skillful in the use of weapons and courageous in
the battle-field. He is not, however, bound to have the special science
of a general, nor must he in times of peace profess unique devotion to
the art of war: that would argue a coarseness of nature or vainglory.
Again, he must excel in all manly sports and exercises, so as, if
possible, to beat the actual professors of each game, or feat of skill
on their own ground. Yet here also he should avoid mere habits of
display, which are unwo