Many of these women of the Renaissance in Italy were famous for their devotion to works of charity. Indeed I know nothing that is more admirable than the story of their care for the ailing poor. It is often presumed that between their interest in education and literature and the artists of the time, and above all their devotion to the pleasures of dress and decoration, silks and jewels and perfumes, then coming in so rapidly from the East, these women must have had very little time for anything but selfish display of their personal beauty or intellectual talent. The rapid accumulation of wealth, {325} proportionally at least as great as in our time, might very readily be supposed to direct them as it has many other generations from the more serious side of life. The actual story of their lives is very different. There were exceptions, who have unfortunately attracted more attention than others, of whom little that is good can be said. The proportion, however, who devoted themselves with a nobility of soul that deserves to be commemorated to unselfish care for those who needed it was very large. Mr. Staley in his "Heroines of Genoa" (p. 225) has a paragraph on this subject which well deserves to be recalled, for it refers almost entirely to the women of Columbus' Century, and it must not be forgotten that Genoa was much more of a commercial city, with a more rapid rise in wealth, than any other in Italy except possibly Venice, and the beautiful spirit of personal service for the poor is therefore all the more admirable. "Women in every age and land are prone much more to works of mercy and religion; of such surely was 'the crown of daughters of Genoa'--so-called by many writers. Benedettina Grimaldi, 'chaste, self-denying, amiable, charitable, moderate in dress and personal pleasures,' a munificent patroness of the great Ospedale di Pammatone, nursed patients suffering from plague and leprosy and endowed beds for their treatment and alleviation; Argentina, daughter of Signore Opicio Spinola, and wife of the Marchese di Monferrato: Violanta, daughter of Signore Gianandrea Doria; and Isabella, daughter of Signore Luca Fiasco, and wife of Luchino, Prince of Milan, were contemporaries in the beneficent field of charity. Devoted to the offices of religion, they proved the sincerity of their faith by their eleemosynary services to sick and dying men and women in prison and to debased mariners in port. Benevolent institutions were founded and endowed, under the style of 'Le Donne di Misericordia,' in 1478 and in 1497, 'La Campagnia del Mantiletto'--'Wearers of the Veil,' by the munificence of noble-hearted women. All these threw open to the suffering objects of their regard the healthful pleasure grounds of their villas, and it was no rare sight to find a lady, fashionably attired, seated under the {326} colonnade of a temple, or beneath a shady tree, talking to and cheering poor and friendless sufferers."