satisfied all their desires in those early days when great Florentine families lived simply and frugally, and the lady passed her time in looking after her household and teaching her daughters to sew and say their prayers. If the girl’s daily task was not done in time, “cuffs would fly, or even a cane would cleanse her skirts of dust,” says an old writer. Conversation with men, even with near relations, was not permitted; in some houses the girls were not allowed to play with their brothers and at table they never spoke save in answer to their parents. If an entertainment was given they were shut up in their own room, and looking out of the window was severely prohibited as it might lead to loss of reputation. But things changed in the sixteenth century when Messer Agostino Dini built for himself this villa suited to a noble Florentine, and like many another spent too much money on bricks and mortar. No doubt the Dini were among the people blamed by Senator Vincenzio di Giovanni di Niccolò Giraldi who, writing to a friend in 1598, deplores the gradual extinction of simple old Florentine customs in favour of Spanish grandeur and magnificence. “Now,” he writes, “little girls wear dresses of fine cloth, not only in Florence but in the country, more suitable to brides than to children, and expect to be waited on by men and maid-servants. Going afoot is out of fashion, and that they may not accustom themselves to so rustic a custom they take the air in a carriage.... There are not more grains of sand in the bed of the Arno after a flood, than there are ornaments and flimsy vanities on their heads in order to augment the natural love of dress inherent in woman. And when of marriageable age they no longer rise with the sun to go to early mass, but lie abed so as not to lose their sleep or spoil their complexions. As to work, I am told the girls sometimes fashion pretty and delicate things but coarse sewing, such as our wives did, they will not look at, for such work and the making of their beds of a-morning is not noble, so is left to the maids.... When the blessed and much desired husband arrives none can describe the grandeur and comforts that are indulged in. Dresses of cloth of gold and of thick silk trimmed with gold lace of diverse kinds are bought for the bride, without reflecting whether they are suited to her own or her husband’s condition. She must be on a par with others, for there is no longer any difference between one person and another, or between high and low rank. People say such a one spends of his own and so may do as others do; it would be a small evil if he only spent what was his, but often now-a-days it becomes apparent that he spends what belongs to others. Then a carriage and fine horses are a necessity, for whoso takes a wife and does not set up a carriage would be flouted by the women and pointed at as ill-bred and miserly. So they pay their visits in Florence in noble fashion with great comfort, scornfully pitying the