age that it could produce even such an ideal. "Carried to the north of Europe," says Mr. Courthope, "and grafted on the still chivalrous manners of the English aristocracy, the ideal of Castiglione contributed to form the character of Sir Philip Sidney." The delicacy of Castiglione's sentiments is shown by his bitter mortification at the unjust reproaches of Clement VII., into whose service he afterwards entered, and who accused him of failure as a diplomatist. These are said to have broken his heart. He died in 1529. Raphael had painted his portrait, his tomb was designed by Giulio Romano, and his epitaph was written by Bembo.
"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove." The Asolani of Bembo, therefore, a disquisition on Love from different points of view, composed in imitation of Cicero's Tusculan Questions, should take precedence of Castiglione's Cortegiano, but it can hardly be said that it does. The Cortegiano is a piece of real life, indicating, if not precisely what the highest Italian society was, at all events what it felt it ought to be. Bembo's dialogues, or rather monologues, might have been composed in any age of refinement; they are purely academical in form, and the perpetual justice of the sentiments is purchased by perpetual commonplace. Seldom, however, have commonplaces been set off with such harmony and polish of style, or with more ingenious eloquence, especially at the conclusion, where the Hermit reconciles Love's advocates and his accusers by descanting on the charms of ideal beauty. If it be true that to have read it was the indispensable passport to good society, the circumstance is creditable to the age's literary taste, and still more so to its standard of ideal excellence. Bembo's prose is more satisfactory than his poetry, perhaps be-
