an Italian term, synonymous with cariatier servente, and used to signify a dangler about ladies. Formerly no married woman of fashion was to be seen in public without her cicisbeo, whose duty it was to attend upon her everywhere, and in short to act the part of the most devoted admirer. This practice is now fast declining. Though the office of cicisbeo has been the subject of frequent invective, it has not wanted its advocates and admirers. Among others, Baretti, in his "Account of the Manners and Customs of Italy," has endeavoured to vindicate it with much ingenuity— ascribing it to a spirit of gallantry derived from the age of chivalry, and much heightened and refined by the revival of the Platonic philosophy in Italy about the thirteenth century, and by the verses of Petrarch and his numerous imitators.