uomini non sanno essere onorevolmente tristi’; men know not how to be bad with credit to themselves.  The context proves that Gianpaolo failed to win the honor of a signal crime.  Compare the use of the word onore in Lorinzino de’ Medici’s ‘Apologia.’

With the Italian conception of Onore we may compare their view of Onesta in the female sex.  This is set forth plainly by Piccolomini in La Bella Creanza delle Donne.[1] As in the case of Onore, we have here to deal, not with an exquisite personal ideal, but with something far more material and external.  The onesta of a married woman is compatible with secret infidelity, provided she does not expose herself to ridicule and censure by letting her amour be known.  Here again, therefore, the proper translation of the word seems to be credit.  Finally, we may allude to the invective against honor which Tasso puts into the mouths of his shepherds in Aminta[2] Though at this period the influence of France and Spain had communicated to aristocratic society in Italy an exotic sense of honor, yet a court poet dared to condemn it as unworthy of the Bell’ eta dell’ oro, because it interfered with pleasure and introduced disagreeable duties into life.  Such a tirade would not have been endured in the London of Elizabeth or in the Paris of Louis XIV.  Tasso himself, it may be said in passing, was almost feverishly punctilious in matters that touched his reputation.

[1] La Raffaella, ovvero Delia bella Creanza delle Donne (Milano, Daelli).  Compare the statement of the author in his preface, p. 4, where he speaks in his own person, with the definition of Onore given by Raffaella, pp. 50 and 51 of the Dialogue:  ’l’onore non e riposto in altro, se non nella stimazione appresso agli uomini ... l’onor della donna non consiste, come t’ho detto, nel fare o non fare, che questo importa poco, ma nel credersi o non credersi.’

[2] This invective might be paralleled from one ot Masuccio’s Novelle (ed.  Napoli, pp. 389, 390), in which he almost cynically exposes the inconvenience of self-respect and delicacy.  The situation of two friends, who agree that honor is a nuisance and share their wives in common, is a favorite of the Novelists.

An important consideration, affecting the whole question of Italian immorality, is this.  Whereas the northern races had hitherto remained in a state of comparative poverty and barbarism, distributed through villages and country districts, the people of Italy had enjoyed centuries of wealth and civilization in great cities.  Their towns were the centers of luxurious life.  The superfluous income of the rich was spent in pleasure, nor had modern decorum taught them to conceal the vices of advanced culture beneath the cloak of propriety.  They were at the same time both indifferent to opinion and self-conscious in a high degree.  The very