[70] “_For life_, is too short!” [71] “Beatrice gazed upwards, and I on her did gaze.” —DANTE. CHARITAS PIRKHEIMER.[72] “Good and evil fortune are to a brave man as his right hand and his left: he uses either equally well.”—_Saying of S. Catherine of Sienna._ Charitas Pirkheimer, the eldest daughter of John Pirkheimer and Barbara Löffelholz, was born on the 21st of March, 1466. Her family was a distinguished one in the annals of Nuremberg, her native town, one of those old free cities of Germany whose burghers, as Æneas Sylvius, afterwards Pope Pius II., once said, were better lodged and more daintily fed than the kings of Scotland. Among the citizens of Nuremberg there was a kind of prescriptive aristocracy or patriciate composed of those families technically called “_Rathsfähig_”—that is, capable of being elected members of the ruling body or council of the little republic. Of those whose names occur again and again in this history one of the most ancient was that of the Pirkheimer, who, for at least a hundred and fifty years before the birth of Charitas, had been celebrated for their learning, piety, and statesmanship. Upright and honorable in their private life, as well as in the execution of their public trusts, they were looked up to by all, and their women no less than their men were distinguished for strength of character, love of learning, and solid, enlightened piety. Nuremberg was at that time a centre of art and letters. Her youths went to Italy and studied at the old universities of Padua and Bologna, whence they brought back the prevailing enthusiasm for classical lore; the new art of printing had found in her citizens discerning patrons; the streets were full of the beautiful houses of the rich merchants; churches and monasteries adorned with treasures of sacred art abounded, as even to this day the passing tourist can see; Albert Dürer, Adam Krafft, and Peter Vischer made their native city known far and wide in the world of art; while Regiomontanus drew his astronomical instruments from Nuremberg and published his works there, and his disciple, Martin Behaim, a Nuremberger by birth, discovered the sea-route to the East Indies. Literature was even more firmly established, and John Pirkheimer himself instituted a sort of academy after the model of those of the Italian princes. Wilibald, his only son and the last of his name, continued his work and became famous as the friend or patron of nearly all the renowned men of learning of his time.