Castiglione wrote little, but that little is of rare merit. His verses, in Latin and Italian, are elegant in the extreme; his letters (Padua, 1769-1771) are full of grace and finesse. But the book by which he is best remembered is the famous treatise, Il Cori,egiano, written in 1514, published at Venice by Aldus in 1528, and translated into English by a certain Thomas Hoby as early as 1561. This book, called by the Italians II Libro d ’ Oro, and remarkable for its easy force and undemonstrative elegance of style no less than for the nobility and manliness of its theories, describes the Italian gentleman of the Renaissance, under his brightest and fairest aspect, and gives a charming picture of the court of Guidobaldo da Montefeltre, duke of Urbino, “confessedly the purest and most elevated court in Italy.” In the form of a discussion held in the duchess’s drawingroom—with Elizabetta Gonzaga, Pietro Bembo, Bernardo Bibbiena, Giuliano de’ Medici, Emilia Pia, and Ceretino the Unique among the speakers—the question, What constitutes a perfect courtier? is debated. With but few differences, the type determined on is the ideal gentleman of the present day. See Ginguené, Histoire Littéraire de V Italie, vi., vit; and J. A Symonds, Ths Renaissance in Italy, London, 1875.

CASTIGLIONE, GiovanniBenedetto (1616-1670), currently named in Italy II Grechetto, and in France Le Benédette, a painter of the Genoese School, was born in Genoa, and studied for some time under Vandyck. He painted portraits, historical pieces, and landscapes, but chiefly excelled in fairs, markets, and rural scenes with animals. His paintings are to be found at Rome, Venice, Naples, Florence, and more especially Genoa and Mantua. He also executed a great number of etchings, which are spirited, free, and full of taste; Diogenes searching for a Man is one of the principal of these. The etchings are remarkable for light and shade, and have even earned for Castiglione the name of “a second Rembrandt.” The Presepio (Nativity of Jesus) in the church of San Luca, Genoa, ranks among his most celebrated paintings; the Louvre also contains eight characteristic examples. In his closing years he lived in Mantua, painting for the court; here he received his name of “Grechetto,” from the classic air of his pastorals, and here he died of gout in 1670. His brother Salvatore aud his son Francesco excelled in the same subjects; and it is thought that many paintings which are ascribed to Benedetto are only copies after him, or perhaps originals by his son or brother.

CASTIGLIONE, Carlo Ottavio, Count (1784-1849), an Italian philologist of considerable reputation, was born at Milan of an ancient family. His principal work was done in connection with the Arabic and other Oriental languages; but he also performed good service in several other departments. In 1819 he published Monete Cufichx del Museo di Milano, and assisted Cardinal Mai in his Ulphiloe partium ineditarum in Ambrosianis palimpsestis repertarum editio. A learned Mémoire géographique et numismatique sur la partie orientale de la Barbarie appelée Afrikia par les Arabes appeared in 1826, and established his reputation. In 1829 he published by himself the Gothic version of the second epistle of Paul to the Corinthians; and this was followed by the Gothic version of the epistle to the Romans, the~first epistle to the Corinthians, and the epistle to the Ephesians in 1834; by Galatians, Philippians, and 1 Thessalonians in 1835, and by 2 Thessalonians in 1839. His life was written by Biondelli, and appeared at Milan in 1856.

Old Castile is bordered on the N. by the Bay of Biscay, on the E. and N.E. by Biscay, Alava, Navarre, and Aragon, on the S. by New Castile, and on the W. by Leon and Asturias. It is divided into the provinces of Burgos, Logroño, Santander, Soria, Segovia, Avila, Palencia, Valladolid, and has an area of 25,409 square miles, and a population estimated in 1870 at 1,689,864 inhabitants. The country consists of vast plains, which form, between the Cantabrian chain in the north and the chain of Sierras stretching south-west from Aragon to Estremadura, a great table-land, of a height between 2500 and 4000 feet above the sea. The principal rivers are the Douro and the Ebro. The plains are barren and dry, with scarcely a tree, meadow, or spring of water; but the hills bordering the mountain ranges are well clothed with oak-forests. The climate is healthy, but subject to great extremes of cold and heat; frosts in the higher regions may last three months at a time. The soil is productive, but poorly cultivated; the harvests of wheat, however, are abundant. Wine and oil of inferior quality, and madder, are produced in considerable quantity, but fruits are scarce except at Bureba. The export trade is chiefly in wool, cattle, sheep, and wheat. The bad state of the roads (which are often impassable for mules), the insufficiency of railway communication, and the neglected condition of the Port of Santander, are great obstacles to commerce.

New Castile is bounded on the N. by Old Castile, on the E. by Aragon and Valencia, on the S. by La Mancha, on the W. by Estremadura. It forms the southern portion of the great central table-land of Spain, and comprises the provinces of Madrid, Toledo, Guadalajara, and Cuenca. The total area is 20,178 square miles, inhabited by a population estimated in 1870 at 1,277,123. The principal mountain ranges are the Sierra Guadarama in the north, and the Sierra Morena in the south. The chief rivers are the Tagus, Guadiana, Guadalquiver, Segura, and Xucar. The climate is more rigorous than that of Old Castile, and the mean temperature, on account of the elevation of surface, is not more than 59°; but the heat in summer is extreme in the valleys. The rainfall is not more then 10 inches in a year; the winds are dry and violent. The whole country presents the aspect of a barren dusty steppe, with patches of olive-trees here and there, and wheat, pea, and saffron fields. During the rainy season the vegetation is very luxuriant; but agriculture is in a backward state; the soil is fertile, but the rivers are not used for its irrigation. The total quantity of wheat raised is barely sufficient for the wants of the population. Hemp and flax and olive-trees are cultivated. Timber and fire-wood are becoming dearer, as the country is very little wooded. Honey is gathered in considerable quantities; and sheep, oxen, and mules are reared in great numbers. Iron, salt, and quicksilver are worked; the mineral resources are good, but ill developed. The manufactures are chiefly of woollen goods, plain and figured velvets, silks, satins, calicoes, stockings, earthenware, and cutlery.

The inhabitants of both Old and New Castile are a loyal and manly race, preserving the primitive simplicity and pure Spanish, as well as the pride, of their forefathers. They are uneducated and inclined to bigotry, but naturally shrewd and intelligent. The tillage of the land and the pasturing of sheep are their chief employments.

Castillejo was a voluminous writer of verse. His poems are worthy of note, not only on account of their intrinsic merit, but also as being the last manifestation of importance of the older Spanish School of poetry against the younger section under the leadership of Garcilaso de la Vega. That fine melodist and brilliant rhetorician, the Ronsard of Spain, seconded by Boscan and Hurtado de Mendoza, had introduced into his own land the rhythms and cadences employed in Italy; through him the sonnet, the canzone, the octaves of the comic epics, and even the terza rima of the comedy itself had been transplanted into Spanish soil; and he and his followers had created a vocabulary of picked and exquisite terms which, passing through the hands of the magniloquent Herrera, was to end in the monstrous dialect of Gongora and his disciples. Against this revolution Castillejo set his face, fighting gallantly and unavailingly in defence of the antique metrical forms and structures. The use of these he never abandoned, save on one or two occasions when, for purposes of parody, he produced sonnets and octaves. In the poetry of Castillejo, which is written chiefly in “quintillas” and “copias de pié quebrado,” are all the qualities that make the older verse of Spain such pleasant reading—the graceful simplicity, the artless elegance, the fluency and spontaneity (which sometimes, however, degenerates into garrulity), the keen and homely mother wit, often gross but seldom offensive or cruel. He has, however, other qualities which are peculiar to himself, and which give him a place apart even among the school that may be said to end in him; his society verses are bright with a pleasant gossipy amiability; his satires are quick with a certain cynical sprightliness that makes them still amusing and attractive; while one at least of his poems, the “Dialogue between Himself and his Pen,” overflows with a humorous tenderness that is extremely effective. Writing on anything and everything—“On a Green and Yellow Costume,” “On the Wood Guaiacum,” “On a Friend’s Horse called Tristram,” —he of course produced a cloud of rhymes that are intolerable and to be avoided. Some of his “Villancicos,” “Letras,” and “Motes,” however, are charming in despite of years; a not infrequent note in them reminding the reader somewhat of the quaint graces of Charles of Orleans, with whom in this fondness for elaborate trifles Castillejo may be said to have a certain affinity, though immeasurably his inferior in delicacy of touch and artistic restraint. His principal satires, “The Sermon against Love” and the “Dialogue of the Conditions of Women,” are amusing and witty enough; while his “Galatea,” an imitation of Ovid, must be regarded as one of the sweetest pieces of pastoral poetry in the whole range of Spanish letters, and, with the exception of the exquisite little anacreontic to Love, as the best of Castillejo’s many poems.

The strong anti-clerical feelings of Castillejo, himself an ecclesiastic, have been already remarked. His satires were treated exceedingly ill on this account by the officers of the Inquisition, who did not scruple to excise large portions of them, and to fill up the gaps thus caused with screeds of a contrary tendency, the work of their own hack rhymesters, who had at this period a great deal of work to do of the same sort. The poems themselves are divided into three books, the first devoted to “Love,” and the second to “Conversation and Pastime;” while the third is composed of moral and religious verses. The best text is that given in the BibUoteca de Autores Españoles, vol. xxxii., Madrid, 1832.