It was in the Renaissance, and in the courts and cities of Italy, that the larger virtues of measure and magnanimity and liberality were first felt to be inadequate, in men no less than in women and children, without the minor nuances of good manners. It was first felt there that in such matters as yawning or coughing in another's face, carelessness and greediness in eating, and other annoying traits, there could be only one standard for both sexes and for all ages. If the mediaeval ideal of "courtoisie" was based essentially on the relation of the sexes, without regard to individual instinct or social agreement in the wider sense, the "Galateo," in basing good manners on the desire to please others, wholly regardless of sex, represents a real advance, or at least a widening of social interest. On a basis of mediaeval manners, then, the Renaissance superimposed the classical ideal of "urbanitas" or "civilitas." In keeping with the spirit of his time, Della Casa rounded all this practice and precept into a code; and because to codify is to stereotype, he is in part responsible for the fact that the pattern he formulated has scarcely been altered from his day to ours. There is one side of personal manners, however, in which there has been much change. When Bacon says that "cleanness of body was ever deemed to proceed from a due reverence to God," he can hardly be said to summarize theological opinion on the subject of cleanliness in the preceding fifteen hundred years. The rules of St. Benedict permit bathing only to invalids and the very old, except on rare occasions; although an eighteenth century French ecclesiastic insists that the church never objected to bathing, "provided one indulges in it because of necessity and not for the sake of pleasure." But our concern is only with secular society, and there we find that cleanliness was considered only in so far as it was a social necessity, if indeed then; as an individual necessity or habit it scarcely appears at all. Della Casa's standard of social manners applies here, too: cleanliness was dictated by the need of pleasing others, and not because of any inner demand of individual instinct. But even in this Italy was in advance of her neighbours, if personal cleanliness represents social advance. In France, odorous greatness was the rule, and contemporary chronicles record the filthy personal habits of Henry of Navarre, the great Condé, and Louis XIII. The "Loix de la Galanterie," nearly a century after the "Galateo," advises the gallant to wash his hands every day--and "his face almost as often." All this has changed. Personal cleanliness, because of its complete acceptance as an individual necessity, has virtually ceased to touch the problem of social manners at any point; and cultivated society simply acts from time to time by formulating new delicacies of neatness and cleanliness, makes them the habit of life, and, forgetting them completely, passes on to new trifles of perfection.