court and served their chosen prince in war or at the council-table, or even 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 unworthy of a man who aspires to be a gentleman and not an athlete.  Another indispensable quality is gracefulness in all he does and says.  In order to secure this elegance, he must beware of every form of affectation:  ’Let him shun affectation, as though it were a most perilous rock; and let him seek in everything a certain carelessness, to hide his art, and show that what he says or does comes from him without effort or deliberation.’  This