The _Teogenio_ was sent with a letter of dedication to Lionelle d'Este not long after his father's death.[248] Alberti apologizes for its Italian style and assures the prince it had been written merely to console him in his evil fortunes. The speakers are two, Teogenio and Microtiro.[249] The dialogue opens with a passage on friendship, and a somewhat labored description of the grove where Teogenio intends to pass the day. Microtiro has come from the city. His friend, the recluse, welcomes him to the country with these words: "Ma sediamo, se così ti piace, qui fra questi mirti, in luogo non men delizioso che vostri teatri e tempi amplissimi e sontuosissimi." This strikes the keynote of the treatise, the theme of which is the superiority of study in the country over the distractions of the town. Reading it, we see how rightly Landino assigned his part to Alberti in the Camaldolese Discussions.[250] That ideal of rural solitude which the Italian scholars inherited from their Roman forefathers, receives its earliest and finest treatment in this dialogue. It is not communion with nature so much as the companionship of books and the pursuit of study in a tranquil corner of the Tuscan hills, that Alberti has selected for his panegyric.[251] "The society of the illustrious dead," he says in one of the noblest passages of the essay, "can be enjoyed by me at leisure here; and when I choose to converse with sages, politicians or great poets, I have but to turn to my bookshelves, and my company is better than your palaces with all their crowds of flatterers and clients can afford."[252] After enlarging on the manifold advantages of a student's life, he concludes the book with a magnificent picture of human frailty, leading up to a discourse on death.
It is noticeable that Alberti, though frequently approaching the subject of religion, never dilates upon it, and in no place declares himself a Christian. His creed is that of the Roman moralists--a belief in the benignant Maker of the Universe, an intellectual and unsubstantial theism. We feel this even in that passage of the _Famiglia_ when Giannozzo and his wife pray in their bed-chamber to God for prosperity in life and happiness in children.[253] There is not a word about spiritual blessings, no allusion to Christ or Madonna, though a silver statue of the Saint with ivory hands and face is standing in his tabernacle over them[254]--nothing, indeed, to indicate that this grave Florentine couple, whom we may figure to ourselves like Van Dyck's merchant and wife in the National Gallery, were not performing sacrifice and praying to the _Di Lares_ of a Roman household. The Renaissance had Latinized even the religious sentiments, and the elder faiths of the middle ages were extinct in the soundest hearts of the epoch.[255]