Nevertheless, the age was in many respects simple, and remained so even after communication had been rendered easier in all directions, wealth accumulated, and more connections formed. The houses were simple, with their windows closed, not yet by panes of glass, but by wooden shutters, with their steep staircases and narrow courtyards; the furniture and the meals were simple, even of the foremost citizens and high magistrates; the clothing of the men was simple—and all this lasted to the fifteenth century, and during a part of it. The loggie have been already spoken of, in which, about the middle of this century, important family affairs were still despatched. At weddings and other family festivals, those who were invited assembled before the house, which often had not space to hold them all—as may be easily comprehended, when we find that the statutes of 1415 decreed that the number of the guests on both sides should not exceed two hundred. Notwithstanding Dante’s complaint that a father, at the birth of a daughter, thought with terror on the time of her marriage, the dowry was still, a century after his time, small in comparison with the wealth of the family. They saved at home, in order to gain means for public purposes, for ecclesiastical buildings and endowments, for beneficent institutions and patriotic festivals. The building of churches and hospitals came before the expenses for decorating town-house and villa. The public festivals were brilliant, and united spiritual and worldly interests. First in rank were those on the day of John the Baptist, the patron saint of the city, to which all the towns, villages, and _protégés_ of the territory brought votive offerings, and races were held in the afternoon, a custom which dated from 1288, when the Florentines had besieged Arezzo on that day. Races were customary on other festivals also, either with riders or free horses (_barberi_), as in the present day in Florence and other towns of Italy. The prizes consisted of large pieces of gold and silk brocades, called _palio_. Beside the feast of St. John, in which the whole city with the signoria and other magistrates took a part, and that on St. Peter’s day, various others celebrated patriotic events. Thus the feast on St. Romulus’ day commemorated deliverance from the threatening hordes of Radagaïs; that on St. Barnabas’ day the victory over the Ghiellines on Campaldino in 1279; that on St. Anne’s day the expulsion of the Duke of Athens; St. Victor’s day the victory over the Pisans in 1364. Church festivals were frequently united with mysteries in Carmine, Sto. Spirito, San Felice, &c.; representations which we find shared in by the highest classes, and customary even in the second half of the fifteenth century. Various kinds of amusements took place in the open air; and the history of the Carraia bridge tells of the accident which occurred on May 1, 1304, when the bridge fell in, during a representation of the infernal