THE RENAISSANCE IN ITAL Y. 697 



THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. 



WILLIAM SHIELDS LISCOMB. 



The fervor which had previously been felt by individuals now permeated 

 society. A sense of the importance of culture took complete possession of Italy, 

 It had come slowly and uncertainly, as a morning beset with clouds, in which 

 the contest between light and darkness seems for a time doubtful. Yet men, 

 peering across the sea on whose borders they had so long been wandering, saw the 

 mists begin to lift, and at length descried the farther shore. Enchanted by the 

 vision which, like some magnificent mirage, arose before their gaze, they stood for 

 a moment spellbound ; then reverently knelt to pay their adoration and offer their 

 gifts at the cradle of this new-born redemption for the race. The conviction per- 

 vaded all classes that antiquity alone had power to rescue the world from the 

 evils with which it had been so hopelessly struggling. *' Like islands of safety 

 in the midst of the universal deluge," says Grimm, " the ideas of the great minds 

 of the past emerged; in the general confusion men fled to them for refuge." In 

 city after city the flame of enthusiasm burst forth. Youths forsook the ware- 

 house and the tavern to consecrate themselves to learning. Merchants stole 

 away from their counting-rooms to converse with literary friends, or listen to the 

 lectures of eminent professors. Captains of adventure read Virgil and Livy by 

 the camp-fire, or in the pauses of the march. Noble ladies fled from the ennui 

 of seclusion, and exchanged the trivial gossip of courts for the priceless treasures 

 of knowledge. Princes spent fabulous sums in the patronage of humanists, artists, 

 and authors. Peasants sought for their sons a place in the republic of letters, 

 where genius was everywhere acknowledged as the peer of birth. The leaders 

 of the demi-monde applied themselves to the poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy of 

 Rome, in order to acquire that development and elegance of taste which should 

 fit them, like Leontium and Glycera of Athens and Diotima of Mantinea, for 

 companionship with the wits and thinkers of their time. Municipalities furnished 

 employment to skillful Latinists as secretaries, chancellors, and ambassadors. 



Popes vied with sovereigns in encouraging and promoting the very things 

 which their predecessors had denounced as damnable. The Medici and other 

 great Florentines directed their correspondents to purchase relics of antiquity at 

 any price, and their ships came home laden not only with costly merchandise, 

 but with precious codices, busts, statues, reliefs, and other objects of virtu. Nic- 

 olo Niccoli sat at a table with his friends, discussing the questions then upper- 

 most in every mind, and eating from fair antique vases, while his house was lit- 

 erally packed with inscriptions, coins, marbles, and engraved gems, purchised 

 without regard to cost, or sent him as gifts by those who knew his lOve of such 

 things. The learned rejected their own names in the vulgar tongue, and assumed 

 Latin titles instead. Pagan writers were quoted in the pulpit on an equality 

 with the Fathers of the church, and at length, in the estimate even of high eccle 



