ELEMENTS OF THE RENAISSANCE. 487 



resumed with redoubled vigour and success. For then 

 new markets were opened for the spices of the East. 

 Pepper became a requisite of European life; and pepper 

 could be obtained from the Italians alone. The Indian 

 trade was not monopolised by a single man, as it was 

 in the lands of the East. It was distributed amongst 

 an immense population. Wealth produced elegance, 

 leisure, and refinement. There came into existence a 

 large and active-minded class, craving for excitement, 

 and desirous of new things. They hungered and 

 thirsted after knowledge : they were not content with 

 the sterile science of the priests. And when it was 

 discovered that the world of the ancients lay buried in 

 . their soil, they were seized with a mania resembling 

 that of treasure-seekers in the East, or of the gold- 

 hunters in the new world. The elements of the 

 Renaissance were preserved partly in Rome and the 

 cities of the West, partly in Constantinople, and partly 

 in the East. The Arabs, when they conquered 

 Alexandria, had adopted the physical science of the 

 Greeks, and had added to it the algebra and arith- 

 metic of India, Plato and Aristotle, Galen and 

 Hippocrates, Ptolemy and Euclid, had been translated 

 by the Eastern Christians into Syriac, and thence into 

 the Arabic. But the Arabs had not translated a 

 single Greek historian or poet. These were to be 

 found at Constantinople, where the Greek of the 

 ancients was still spoken in its purity at the court 

 and in the convent, though not by the people of the 

 streets. The Greeks also had preserved the arts of 

 their forefathers ; though destitute of genius, they at 

 least retained the art of laying on colours, of model- 

 ling in clay, and of sculpturing in stone. The great 

 towns of Italy, desirous to emulate the beauties of 



