The share of laborious learning voluntarily borne by ladies of the highest birth in the fifteenth century is a singular problem. There was scarcely a sovereign family that could not boast among its daughters some votary of intellectual pursuits, in an age when mental cultivation was of a sort more calculated to overburden genius, than to give wings to fancy in her flight after knowledge. A familiar acquaintance with Latin was then requisite, being the key to modern as well as classic and biblical literature, and also the current language of diplomacy or courtly intercourse.[*81] The abstruse distinctions of ancient philosophy, the complex tenets of dogmatic theology, the fatiguing jargon of scholastic disputation, were all included in the circle of female accomplishments. Such were the graces for which Bianca d'Este, Isotta Nogarolo, and Veronica Gambara were famed; while another Isotta, paramour of the truculent Lord of Rimini, divided contemporary adulation between the beauties of her person and her mind. The vagueness of such eulogies might well justify scepticism as to the profundity of that lore they were intended to vaunt; but in the case of Ippolita Maria Sforza, daughter of Francesco Duke of Milan, and wife of Alfonso King of Naples, chance has afforded us a standard of the knowledge mastered by these learned ladies. It was for this princess that Constantine Lascaris composed the earliest Greek Grammar; and in the convent library of Sta. Croce at Rome there is a transcript by her of Cicero De Senectute, followed by a juvenile collection of Latin apophthegms curiously indicative of her character and studies. The house of Montefeltro could boast a full share of such distinction, in Princess Battista, wife of the wretched Galeazzo Lord of Pesaro, to whose literary celebrity we have elsewhere paid our tribute, and whose progeny we have seen maintaining the prestige of her accomplishments to the third generation. Her great-granddaughter Battista Sforza rivalled her accomplishments, and those of her cousin Ippolita Maria, and, when placed by her marriage at the head of the court at Urbino, contributed much to the literary reputation which it then first obtained. Its two succeeding duchesses of the Gonzaga race, although women of remarkable talent, did not carry so far the cultivation of their natural powers; but we have found, in their relative and associate Emilia Pia, one whose learning was scarcely less notable than her wit. [Footnote *81: On the whole subject of women, see note *1, p. 72. Their education was the same as that of their brothers. Cf. SYMONDS, _The Renaissance in Italy_ (1904), vol. V., p. 250, note 1, and BURCKHARDT, _The Civilisation of the Renaissance_ (1878), vol. II., p. 161.]