Nor did the rare intellectual attainments of these daughters of Italy destroy that harmony of creation which, some will have it, is sure to be jeopardized by giving women the same educational advantages as men. So far was this from being the case that there were never more loyal and helpful wives nor more devoted and stimulating mothers than there were among those women who wrote verses in the language of Sappho, or delivered public addresses in the tongue of Cicero. Still less did their serious and long-protracted studies entail any of the dangers we hear so much of nowadays. The large and healthy families of many of them prove that intellectual work, even of the highest order, is not incompatible with motherhood; and still less that it, _per se_, conduces, as is so often asserted, to race-suicide. These facts are commended to the consideration of our modern opponents of the higher education of women and to those militant conservatives and old-time reactionaries who are still averse to opening the doors of some of our older universities to women--even such universities as Oxford, several of whose colleges were founded on the revenues derived from suppressed educational institutions which had been built and used for generations for the sole behoof of women. But distinguished as were the women of Italy for their culture and scholarship, they were yet more distinguished as patrons of learning, as leaders and inspirers of the eminent men who were the chief representatives of the Renaissance. Reference has already been made to the influence of Vittoria Colonna on Michaelangelo--"who saw with her eyes, acted by her inspiration, was lifted by her beyond the stars"--but this is only one of many similar instances that might be adduced. Indeed, to the student of the Italian Renaissance, the most interesting feature of it was, not its women doctors and professors, but those noble and accomplished ladies who made the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Milan and Urbino the most noted intellectual centers of Europe. The most beautiful ornaments of the first three courts were Renee, duchess of Ferrara; Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua, and Beatrice d'Este, duchess of Milan. They were all women of exceptional learning and culture, and each was the center of a galaxy of talent such as is rarely witnessed in any one place.