“Ferrara,” says Lamartine, “resembled a colony from the court of Augustus, Leo X., or the Medici; cultured princes—princesses who were heroines of love, poetry, or romance,—cardinals aspiring to the papacy—scholars—artists—poets half knights, half bards—met there every evening, in the splendid halls of Ercole d’Este, in town or country.” At Urbino, the conversations were broken by riding-parties, hawking expeditions, balls, sports, music; life resembled a kaleidoscope, but wit slipped into every pattern as the necessary element of beauty. The duke was in bad health and used to retire early. After his departure the evening flew by delightfully: the young duchess “seems a chain holding us all pleasantly together,” said Castiglione. There was no standing on ceremony; she was always the centre of a circle composed of men or women alternately as chance directed. In addition to the regular group, the company pretty often included some accomplished stranger, some scholar or artist who happened to be passing through. They spoke freely to the ladies on a footing of friendliness. As the evening drew on, some went off for dancing or music, the others continued to start discussions or tell stories enlivened with transparent allegories. In summer this brilliant reunion was held in the garden. Our pictures of society in olden times may often give the impression that only wolves, lions, wild beasts, or else strutting cocks and clucking hens served as models. But to paint this polished society of Urbino, so enthusiastically bent on happiness, we should need colours no palette contains,—transparencies of the Grecian sky, the indigo of certain seas, the liquid azure of certain eyes. For more than a century the court of Urbino was regarded as the supreme exemplar; in the 17th century the Hôtel de Rambouillet was still striving to make itself a copy of it; unluckily such things as these are not easily copied. It would be difficult enough to deduce from the conversations at Urbino a series of rules for the art. No programme was pasted on the walls. But still we may note certain principles: a remarkable good-fellowship, ranging from perfect courtesy to affectionate familiarity; a real sentiment of equality, genuine equality, springing from an exact appreciation of the various degrees of worth, and consequently in that sense aristocratic; finally and especially, freedom, the most absolute openness of mind, the absence of ambitions and pretensions, at any rate so far as appeared; a joyous skilfulness in playing on the surface of things, or in striking out into the vastest regions of thought without effort or constraint.