It is all very well for a woman to be beautiful, to lend grace to the world, to diffuse sweetness and light; but this would be but a vain show if she did not with jealous care nourish in herself the flame of love of the Beautiful. Castiglione, who liked to give a mathematical precision to his definitions, tells us: “Woman must nourish herself on the life of the world and the life of the arts”—thus in appearance relegating the aesthetic life to a second place; but he is very careful to add: “She must occupy herself with literature, music, painting, dancing, and entertaining”; in other words, the heart must reverse the parts, and in the conscience secret preoccupations must come before visible occupations, His view is logical. How could women govern the world if they were in reality its slaves? The first necessity for a lighthouse is a light. Further, we ourselves have a right to ask where these ladies think of leading us. Their art consists in pleasing us and in indoctrinating us with their principles. To please is their secret, with which we do not meddle; it is of little consequence to know if Lucretia Borgia cut out her own dresses, where and by whom Mary Stuart had her hats made, or if women always please by what pleases their husbands. But when they speak of ruling our intelligence, it becomes of very great importance to know how they will deal with us. The intellectual provision of the Renaissance women consisted chiefly of impressions of art, in accordance with Castiglione’s prescription. In this, painting (still more the inferior manual arts—lace-making, embroidery, tapestry) held the lowest rank, on the principle universally accepted in the platonic world that the less an art needs the co-operation of the senses to touch the soul, the greater is its excellence. Music stood higher than painting, because it directly transmits an impression; vocal music in particular represents almost the speech of soul to soul, with but an insignificant admixture of materiality. Poetry was the supreme art, the truly aristocratic thing; no one would have dreamt of comparing it to painting or any manual art. The poet with one stroke paints soul and body; in Ronsard’s words, “he paints in the heavens.” To lay in her stock of happiness, a woman will begin by living in close communion with the Beautiful. Sciences are useless to her; she has little taste, and still less time, for their cultivation. But just as she finds breakfast a necessity, so she ought every morning to give her soul nourishment, if it be only one sip of the beautiful. Louise of Savoy on rising used to read a psalm, “to perfume her day,” as she put it. These few moments’ reading were sufficient to flood her soul with a radiance to light her through the day.