m whom he would have his sons keep
clear at any cost.[6] It is the animosity of the industrious burgher for
the haughty, pleasure-loving, idle, careless man of blood and high
estate. In the bourgeois household described by Pandolfini no one can be
indolent. The men have to work outside and collect wealth, the women to
stay at home and preserve it. The character of a good housewife is
sketched very minutely. Pandolfini describes how, when he was first
married, he took his wife over the house, and gave up to her care all
its contents. Then he went into their bedroom, and made her kneel with
him before Madonna, and prayed God to give them wealth, friends, and
male children. After that he told her that honesty would be her great
charm in his eyes, as well as her chief virtue, and advised her to
forego the use of paints and cosmetics. Much sound advice follows as to
the respective positions of the master and the mistress in the
household, the superintendence of domestics, and the right ordering of
the most insignificant matters. The quality of the dress which will
beseem the children of an honored citizen on various occasions, the
pocket money of the boys, the food of the common table, are all
discussed with some minuteness: and the wife is made to feel that she
must learn to be neither jealous nor curious about concerns which her
husband finds it expedient to keep private.

[1] I ought to state that Pandolfini is at least a century earlier
in date than Casliglione, and that he represents a more primitive
condition of society. The facts I have mentioned about his life are
given on the authority of Vespasiano da Bisticci. The references are
made to the Milanese edition of 1802. It must also be added that
there are strong reasons for assigning the treatise in question to
Leo Battista Alberti. As it professes, however, to give a picture of
Pandolfini's family, I have adhered to the old title. But the whole
question of the authorship of the Famiglia will be fully discussed
in the last section of my book, which deals with Italian literature.
Personally. I accept the theory of Alberti's authorship.

[2] A beautiful description of the religious temper, p. 74.

[3] What Pandolfini says about the beauty of the body is worthy of a
Greek: what he says about exercise might have been written by an
Englishman, p. 77.

[4] Pp. 82-89 are very important as showing how low the