Such the dramas, the faits divers of those days, which every now and again disturbed the peace of our ancestors. The burgher story-tellers who fulfilled -- life, can form an idea of a life that was | standers, women and children, rise up contented to enact itself upon so small in fear, "Accorr'uomo." The dense a stage. Here, on this the true empo- crowd retreats, and when the execurium of Florentine commerce, were tioner arrives with his followers, always gathered together shopkeepers, mer- too late of course - justice, then as chants, doctors, idlers, gamblers, rus- now, was never up to time the victim tics, apothecaries, rogues, maidservants, already lies on the ground in a pool of courtiers, beggars, huxters, and gay blood. oands of spendthrifts. Here, too, were to be found merchandise of every sort and kind fresh meat, fruit, cheese, vegetables, game, poultry, linen, flowers, pottery, barrels, and second-hand the office of our modern newspapers furniture. The street-boys, mischiev- rarely tell of these cruel acts. They ous and quick-tongued even then, took prefer to dwell on the tricks and practiup their permanent abode there, as if it cal jokes with which the merry folk were their proper home; here, too, rats amused themselves, eternal source of held perpetual carnival. In short, fireside talk when the housemates were people and things from all parts of the gathered together before the andirons then known globe were gathered to- of those huge open hearths, under gether in this tiny space. No day whose blackened chimneys the family passed that some disturbance did not assembled before the hour of putting occur, some quarrel, some alarm. Thus out the lights should sound, after which a horse became obstreperous, and every whosoever went last to bed would ascerperson shouted at the top of their tain that the barrels were well closed voices for help, "Accorr'uomo ; "the and the doors and windows tightly Piazza dei Signori was filled up with shut. They were always ready for a the runaways, the palace door was laugh, this people always ready to hastily shut, the family armed itself, forget the terrors of the other world and so did the followers of the captain held up to them by their priests, and and of the executioner; some for very calculated by their weird horrors to fear hid under their beds, to come out damp the most buoyant spirits. The after the tumult had subsided covered incredulity of the new age already bewith dirt and cobwebs. Two mules gan to peep forth, mocking at the pecked at by crows would begin to kick priests, and also a little at the miracles and jump over the stalls of the sellers. and many like impostures. The mockOnce again all the shops were hastily ers and scoffers who laughed at others, shut, and serious quarrels would arise and sought to deceive their neighbors between the linen -drapers and the and the world, called themselves "new butchers on account of the harm done men," and their mischievous doctrines by these infuriated beasts. Sometimes" new things." The group of people even graver disputes arose. Gamblers that gathered around the counters of and keepers of gaming-tables would shops and under the loggie, that nestled come to blows, and such a scene be close to the palaces, made the place enacted as is represented in the fresco re-echo with their clear, silvery laughin the Monastery of Lecceto near ter, to which the knot of whispering Siena. The dice fall on the table in women corresponded, who clustered such a manner that one of the players chatting beside their house doors. The loses he springs to his feet maddened artists, or, as they then called them; by the stroke of ill-luck, and stretching selves, the artificers, were the most out his arms clutches the winner by the ingenious plotters of practical jokes, throat; the other, pale with fear and concocted between one stroke of the anger, seeks in vain for the avenging brush and another. The memory of knife; oaths break out from the lips of them endured for a long while, so much the combatants; the voices of the by-so that Vasari has incorporated into his "Lives" various of those which the | you will see how excellent it will benovelists had not consigned into their come." Soccebonel did as he was told, said the ܂ But whoever searches the mercantile codes amidst the dust of libraries and archives will find that they all concur in condemning such tricks. All of these papers, each of which begins, are pervaded by instances of good examples, and all breathe excellent customs, wise saws, and honest rules. Their theoretical precepts were clearly chronicles of citizen life. "It has ever and then took the cloth to the shearer. been that among painters are found When he went to fetch it back, he new men," says Sacchetti; and Bon-asked how much he had to pay. 66 It amico Buffalmacco, immortalized in the seems to me, nine braccia,' "Decamerone," and the names of Bar- shearer; "therefore give me nine soltolo Gioggi, Bruno di Giovanni, Filippo di." "Nine braccia," said the other, di Ser Brunellesco, Paolo Uccello, and "alas! they measure, but the cloth Donatello, recall to our memories tricks does not grow under their hands." played on a certain Calandrino and on Socccbonel runs to the cutter, runs the Fat Carpenter, besides many others hither and thither, in his despair. At who were the victims of these merci- last he is told that these Florentine less high spirits. But the mad wish to cloths do not grow in water, and one joke and laugh was caught also by man tells him about a person who grander people, and from the work- bought a braccio of Florentine cloth, shops of artificers it entered into those kept it in water, and by next morning of the apothecaries; it took possession it had shrunk so that there was none of the doctors, of the judges, of the left. proctors, it even climbed up into the palace to enliven the dulness of the priori obliged to stay here shut up far away from wife and child, simple men of simple habits, both men and habits bearing the stamp of ancient boorish-" In the name of the Father, Amen," ness. Thus the whole Signoria slept in one room, a fact that gave occasion for many jokes, that indeed provoked them. So simple, truly, were these signori, that it was not uncommon for the pro-inspired by the most severe morality. vost of the priori to go himself into the One of these sapient scribes says:— kitchen to broil his own slice of meat. The tricks and pranks played bordered often, it must be owned, on roguery; but a good laugh at the expense of the person who was in the wrong, and on whom the joke had been perpetrated, was considered to put everything square. For in these days, when everybody thought of themselves and of their own interests, public opinion had no pity or compassion on the man who let himself be befooled. By common consent all manner of wily tricks were permitted to merchants, and the Florentine traders were famous for their great cunning. Sacchetti tells what happened to a certain Socce bonel of Friuli who went to buy some cloth from one of them; he measured out four canes, but then managed to steal half the amount. To cover the fraud, the merchant said to Soccebonel, "If you want to do well with this cloth, leave it to soak all night in water, and Bear well in mind that when you pronounce a sentence you go on straightfor wardly, loyally, and justly, and do not let yourself be swayed aside from this either by bribes, love, or fear, by relationship or friendship, or for the sake of a companion. For the person against whom you give your sentence will be your enemy, and he whom you would serve will hold you neither honest, nor loyal, nor straightforward; he will, instead, always distrust and despise you. Immediately after, a little below, we read: If you have need in trade or in any other business of the friendship of any lord or proprietor, I advise that with carefully chosen presents you curry his favor; watch those who are of his household, above all his secretary, and make friends with him; you can present him with some little thing to his taste, asking help and counsel of him that he may teach you how best to find favor in his master's eyes. Nor is this all. Our practical moralist | every action. It would be useless to gives yet another useful counsel : When you buy oats, look out that the measure is not filled too quickly, for it will always sink two or three per cent.; but when you sell, fill quickly and your oats will grow. Always speak well of the members of the Commune; live in charity with your neighbors, because they always are the first to speak of your affairs, and in honor or dishonor they may make or mar you. should know how to read unless you wish to make her a nun," thus counsels Paolo di Ser Pace da Certaldo. The convents were then, and for centuries after, the sole refuge for these poor wretches. They were also a providence for the prolific families. To have twenty or more children seemed the most natural thing in the world. If they lived it was said, "Heaven be praised;" and if they died, "For everything be heaven praised, Amen." Such were the sentiments of the times. In the memorandas, in domestic chronicles in the time of great mortality, were registered in such terms the deaths as well as the births, with a serenity that to-day to loving mothers would seem cynicism indeed. look for the sentiment that inspires the modern family, where for women is reserved so noble a rôle, such honorable and tender offices. Those poor Florentine mothers had to be contented with such humble activity as the tyranny of their husbands permitted to them, and to live, or rather to drag out, their lives in those gloomy, squalid houses, taking care of the children, It was thus these men of yore coun- visiting the churches, and confessing selled their sons, who grew up quick-to the friars their manifold sins of dewitted and expert in the art of living sire. The daughters—those girls with amid a people who were learned in all whom to-day we take such pains — the stratagems and wiles of life. What were then never even taught to read. marvel, then, that a preacher, in order" If it is a girl, put her to sew and not to attract a congregation, and not to to read; it is not good that a woman speak his words to the desert air, announced that he would proclaim from the pulpit that usury is not a sin? and so he did all through Lent and on Palm-Sunday to a large and attentive congregation. What we moderns term "log-rolling" was the order of the day. Families widened their borders and strengthened their connections by this means, usually favored by matrimonial alliances, for capital was the one and only basis of safety, and this was upheld by a whole mass of laws and privileges. The father was the despot master of all his personal property. He could leave it to whomsoever he chose, to collateral relations or to some pious foundation, nay, even to those children whom love had brought into his house; and this he could do by will, a matter now These documents also hand down to impossible in Continental countries, us indisputable proofs of a singular though still possible in England, where fact that is, the intrusion in the famthe Code Napoléon" does not obtain. ily of a new element that obscures the From this fact we can realize the im-vaunted purity of the morals of those portant place that lawyers and clerks past days. Benevolent critics find an then occupied, for disputes about testa- excuse for this because of the great ments were quite common occurrences. void made by the plague among the city A wife inheriting ab intestato had a and country dwellers, and because the right only to a fourth of her children's prospect of small wages was not enough goods, and in reality only to mere nour- to induce the men and women of the ishment. Everything conspired to pre-people to go out as domestic servants; serve the integrity of capital and hence it was necessary to look to forprevent it from leaving the family, the eign commerce to supply the defifirm, and the commune. It is a point ciency. But this reasoning hardly holds. that cannot be too much insisted on. Rather, we think, it was the trade Inside that society of merchants a with the East, the vagabond life led by greed for gain was the supreme law of the merchants, and their ever-increas ing wealth, that caused that traffic masters. He maliciously explains some in slaves of both sexes which lasted reasons, and tells that they often knew through two centuries, from 1300 on- how to play ugly tricks on their miswards. Oriental slaves bought as live tresses, who, as Alessandra Macinghi, goods, generally through Genoese, Ve- the mother of the Strozzi, confessed netian, and Neapolitan brokers, were some years later, would avenge themchiefly Tartars, Greeks, Turks, Dalma- selves by laying hands on these same tians, and Circassians, and do not seem slaves. Still, pests though they were, to have been archetypes of beauty. it seems the families could not do withThe registers in which the notaries out them. They were the nurses, the marked down, together with the name maids-of-all-work, of their days; and and age, the price and description of Alessandra wrote to her son Filippo the wares, "the points," of the necks when at Naples : "Let me remind you and faces of the slaves bought and of the need we have of a slave, for sold, bear witness to this circumstance; so far we have always had one. If you nearly all had olive complexions, though give orders to have one bought, ask for some were found who had rosy skins a Tartar, for they are the best for hard and were florid and fair. The faces work, and are simple in their ways. never seemed to lack some special and The Russians are more delicate and distinctive mark-some were pocked, prettier, but according to my judgment some had moles, others were scarred; a Tartar. would be best." Nor could the nose was generally squat and flat, Madonna Alessandra have found any the lips thick and prominent, the eyes one who could execute her commission dull and small, the foreheads low and better than Filippo, who already had freckled. To these pen-sketches made with him for a long while a slave who by pedantic and precise lawyers, some knew how to work well, and about portraits correspond that are still ex- whom his mother wrote, April 7, 1469 : tant of these women. In a rare and "Andrea as well as Tomaso Ginori, curious book, the memoranda of Baldo- who are now with you, came to see us vinetti, in which this forebear of the on Easter day, and told me many things famous painter used to illustrate by about your household, and especially drawings his journalistic jottings, there about Marina, and the many pretty are preserved for us the portraits of ways she has with you." And a year three slaves he bought in the years later, in an ironical tone, she says, "I 1377, 1380, 1388: "Dorothea, a Tartar, send you the towels; be careful that from Russia, eighteen years or more of you do not lose them, and that Madama age; Domenica, of white skin, from Marina does not make them disappear;" Tartary; and Veronica, sixteen years from which we gather that by cunning old, whom I bought almost naked from and pretty ways these women knew Bonaroti, son of Simon de Bonaroti" | how to win over their masters and bethat is to say, from an ancestor of come madam. They even obtained, by Michael Angelo. These three Dorothea, Domenica, and Veronica—could, when a little older, have easily served for models to the future Buonarotti for his "Three Fates." Such women, ugly or beautiful, entered the houses of the rich Florentines to perform the most humble services and to take care of the children. They caused much anxiety on every account to the poor house matrons. Pucci, in one of his sonnets, tells us that the slaves had the best of it in everything, and were above every good match, checkmating their faithful labor, good behavior, and general aptitude, many a liberal testamentary bequest. It was yet worse when that bartered blood of Tartars and Russians mixed with that of this pure, ancient, and free race. But let us return to the chaster atmosphere of the family, in which, with accumulated riches, there entered also, alas! those poisonous germs which later on were destined to corrupt and corrode Italian life and conscience. Between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries a great change occurred. The renovation of manners and customs, | women were the best artists of all the already panting towards a freer life, world. that became entirely unbridled in the Renaissance, had weakened faith and discouraged religion. It seemed as though the people no longer understood any but worldly pleasures. The letters of Mazzei, the good notary of Prato, the wise man of "rough soul and frozen heart," bear witness to this. Ser Lapo was an ascetic spirit, a man of good and ancient faith, and a convinced moralist. In his letters is reflected the rebellious sinner, struggling against the holier tendencies that seek to lead him to a peaceful death and the redemption of his earthly errors. It is the fight between the religious sentiment and the moralistic spirit of the new age that radiated in the glory of the Renaissance, but which, after a wonderful moment of splendor, left behind it in the souls of Italians a black and deadly void. Out of this darkness the modern man was to arise later on, purified by these centuries of servitude, and matured by many vigils of thought. Was there ever before them a painternay, even a mere dyer-who could turn black into white? Certainly not; for it is against nature. Yet if a face is yellow and pallid, they change it by artificial means to the hue of the rose. One who by nature or age has a skinny figure, they are able to make florid and plump. I do not think Giotto or any other painter could color betful is, that even a face which is out of ter than they do; but what is most wonderproportion, and has goggle eyes, they will make correct, with eyes like to a falcon's. As to crooked noses, they are soon put. straight. If they have jaws like a donkey, they quickly correct them. If their shoulders are too large they plane them; if one projects more than the other, they stuff them so with cotton that they seem in proportion. And so on with breasts and hips, doing all this without a scalpel, so that Polycletus himself could not have rivalled them. The Florentine women are pastmistresses of painting and modelling, for it is plain to see that they restore where nature has failed. We cannot blame them, nor do we But we have again wandered from wish to do so. Poor women! this was the family. Let us look in once more the only freedom they enjoyed, to masupon the Florentine house, out of whose querade as youthful, happy creatures, windows" the loving slaves shook the to make their faces bright and fresh dust from their masters' dress every while their hearts were often weeping at morning, looking fresher and happier finding themselves supplanted by other than the rose," as a poem of the period has it this house where the wife fashion and shape of the dresses, and women. They also love to change the barely passed in happiness even the here they were able to give free vent to very first months of her married life; that ambitious spirit which they poslater on she merely numbered the years sessed no less than their male relatives. that sped by the names of the children The admirers of the past, beginning who grew up around her, each of whom with Dante, blame them for so much recalled to her one of her husband's long absences, when he had gone away to trade far off beyond the mountains and over the seas. The youthful freshness of these women faded quickly, and as Sacchetti writes, the most beautiful among them in a short time "drooped, degenerated, withered in old age, and volubility, which irritated even the story-tellers and priests, not to mention the husbands, who would willingly have economized on these extravagant expenses of their wives. Sacchetti had much to say on this theme, over which he grows eloquent. He writes in his virtuous indignation how at last became a skull." It was but natural that they should try to correct some women had their dresses cut so low that the armpit could be seen. They then nature by art, and repair the ravages gave a jump and made the collars come up induced by domestic cares; and this to their ears. The girls who used to go not merely from vanity. Even great about so modestly have entirely changed painters like Taddeo Gaddi and Alberto the shape of their hood, so as to reduce it Arnoldi agreed that the Florentine to a cap, and with this head-gear they wear |