And Italy
itself had altered much in the course of two centuries. We feel at
their close that the time for practical jokes between friends and
acquaintances --for 'burle' and 'beffe'--was over in good society, that
the people had emerged from the walls of the cities and had learned a
cosmopolitan politeness and consideration. We shall speak later on of
the intercourse of society in the narrower sense.
Outward life, indeed, in the fifteenth and the early part of the
sixteenth centuries, was polished and ennobled as among ¦ no other
people in the world. A countless number of those small things and great
things which combine to make up what we: mean by comfort, we know to
have first appeared in Italy. In | the well-paved streets of the
Italian cities, driving was universal, while elsewhere in Europe
walking or riding was the custom, and at all events no one drove for
amusement. We read in the novelists of soft, elastic beads, of costly
carpets and bedroom furniture, of which we hear nothing in other
countries. We often hear especially of the abundance and beauty of the
linen. Much of all this is drawn within the sphere of art. We note with
admiration the thousand ways in which art ennobles luxury, not only
adorning the massive sideboard or the light brackets with noble vases,
clothing the walls with the movable splendor of tapestry, and covering
the toilet-table with numberless graceful trifles, but absorbing whole
branches of mechanical work--especially carpentering--into its
province.
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