is to be excluded from the mind of a sagacious prince, whose duties are to be entirely limited by expediency, and whose merits are only to be tested by success. On this principle the examples of successful ability chiefly recommended to the study of Lorenzo are Francesco Sforza, Alexander VI., and Cæsar Borgia.

We have dwelt on the figures of these two representative men, pointing as they do the obvious contrast between the history of the Greek states and of those Italian cities whose moral and intellectual character we propose to consider in this article, partly because we hold it a universal rule that the splendour of a nation's history is proportioned to the nobility of its character, but chiefly because we find in the sentiments of Demosthenes the most authoritative judgment on the opinions of that large school of modern historians, who view men's actions by the light of the same principles as Macchiavelli.

'This book,' says Hegel, speaking of 'The Prince,' has often been cast aside in horror as containing maxims of the most revolting tyranny; yet it was Macchiavelli's high sense of the necessity of constituting a State which caused him to lay down the principles on which alone states could be formed under the circumstances. The isolated lords and lordships had to be entirely suppressed and though our idea of freedom is incompatible with the means which he proposes, both as the only available, and also as wholly justifiable including us these do the most reckless violence, all kinds of deception, murder, and the like-yet we must confess that the despots who had to be subdued were assailable in no other way, inasmuch as indomitable lawlessness and perfect depravity were thoroughly ingrained in them.'

What kind of state would that have been whose foundations were laid inviolence, murder, and deception'? We quote with pleasure the just and generous remarks on this subject of the writer whose work on the Italian Renaissance we propose to make the text of our observations.

'After the book has been shut, and the apology has been weighed, we cannot but pause and ask ourselves the question: which was the true patriot; Macchiavelli systematising the political vices and corruptions of his time in a philosophical essay, and calling on the despot to whom it was dedicated to liberate Italy; or Savonarola denouncing sin and enforcing repentance: Macchiavelli, who taught as precepts of pure wisdom those very principles of public immorality which lay at the root of Italy's disunion and weakness; or Savonarola, who insisted that without a moral reformation no liberty was possible?'

So true and philosophical an appreciation

of the causes which destroyed Italian freedom (and passages of equally sound moral judgment abound in these three volumes) makes us regret the more that we cannot claim Mr. Symonds as an unswerving champion of the Demosthenic against the Macchiavellian principle of political life. His admiration for the intellectual greatness of the Italians, and the gratitude which like every man of taste he feels to them for the noble and beautiful works with which they have enriched the world, prevent him from perceiving that the greatness of their achievements in art was due to moral as well as to intellectual qualities, and that the final decadence of their art no less than the loss of their liberty was due to the corruption of their manners. Hence we find throughout his work a constant conflict between his moral instincts and his philosophical principles, the result of which is a double point of view that produces an impression of infirmity of judgment. For instance, though he pronounces in favour of Savonarola against Macchiavelli, he makes the following apology for Lorenzo de' Medici :—

'It was the duty of Italy in the fifteenth century not to establish religious or constitutional liberty, but to resuscitate culture. . . Therefore the prince who, in his own person, combined all accomplishments, who knew by sympathy and counsel how to stimulate the genius of men superior to himself in special arts and sciences, who spent his fortune lavishly on works of public usefulness, whose palace formed the rallying-point of wit and learning, whose council-chamber was the school of statesmen, who expressed his age in every word and every act, in his vices and his virtues, in his crimes and generous deeds, cannot fairly be judged by a standard of republican morality.'

And again, speaking of the corrupt literati of Italy, he says:

'Humanism was a necessary moment in the evolution of the modern world, and whatever were its errors, however weakening it may have been to Italy, this phase had to be passed through, this nation had to suffer for the general good.'

Now we think it is clear that if it was not the duty of Italy in the fifteenth century' to establish liberty, then Savonarola, whether he was a patriot or not, was not a virtuous man; for if Italy's sole duty was to secure the general good' by promoting a taste for the humanities, then Savonarola, must have been delaying the progress of good by urging his countrymen to make bonfires of their books and pictures. Patriotism, in so far as it is in direct conflict with a law of providence or fate, which, if it exists, must gradually obliterate all na

'The history of the Renaissance is not the history of arts, or of sciences, or of literature,

or even of nations. It is the history of the attainment of self-conscious freedom by the human spirit manifested in the European races. It is no mere political mutation, no new fashion of art, no restoration of classical standards of taste. The arts and the inventions, the knowledge and the books, which suddenly became vital at the time of the Renaissance, had long lain neglected on the shores of the Dead Sea which we call the Middle Ages. It was not their discovery which caused the Renaissance. But it was the intellectual energy, the spontaneous outburst of intelligence, which caused mankind at that period to make use of them. The force then generated still continues vital and expansive in the spirit of the modern world.'

Obviously we are here in the presence of very vast and difficult questions. We think that Mr. Symonds is justified in giving an extended sense to the word 'Renaissance.' Whether the word has all the significance that he claims for it is another question, and he must pardon us if, for the present, we consider his assumptions as unproved, and pass on to a consideration of the more restricted subject with which his work professedly deals. When we have formed an opinion on the Renaissance in Italy, we shall be in a better position to judge of its manifestations in the spirit of the modern world. Meantime, setting aside all differences of opinion, let us hasten to say that Mr. Symonds's treatment of his theme is deserving of the highest praise. At once widely-read and independent, sympathetic and judicious, he has arranged his materials with the accuracy of a scholar and the taste of a gentleman. His deductive method naturally exposes him to grave temptations, yet we have found no attempt in his book to suppress or pervert facts that seem to tell against his conclusions. At the same time the novelty of his hypothesis allows him to give life and order to subjects which, unless sympathetically treated, might prove uninteresting. His skill in arrangement is particularly shown in his volume on 'The Revival of Learning,' where he contrives to throw an historical interest over the crowd of forgotten pedants whose industry achieved the diffusion of modern scholarship. His criticism is sound and vigorous, and we

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his work with the fol

lowing question: How was it that at a certain period about fourteen centuries after Christ, to speak roughly, humanity woke, as it were, from slumber, and began to live?' This statement of the problem of the Renaissance appears to us inadequate and misleading. It is misleading for, except in a very narrow and technical sense, it is not true that humanity ever fell asleep. There are human qualities which a state of barbarism, like that which existed in what are called the Dark Ages, encourages, and which civilisation destroys. Nor will the period that elapsed between the overthrow of the Roman Empire and the Revival of Learning seem a mere time of torpor, if we consider the vast fabric of European civilisation, the foundations of which were then laid. laid. We cannot conceive on what grounds the learning and ingenuity of the scholastic philosophy, however futile may have been its aims, can be likened, as Mr. Symonds likens it, to the Dead Sea; why the intelligence of the builder of Westminster Abbey should fear comparison with that of the architect of the Parthenon; or for what reason St. Wilfrid and St. Benedict are to be considered more somnolent spirits than Catullus and Petronius. The statement, again, is inadequate, for the problem presents a moral and social side, apart from which the great intellectual development of Italy can never be thoroughly understood.

Properly stated, the facts of the Renaissance in Italy appear to us to be these. During the period embraced between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, while the nations of the north were almost entirely absorbed in the rivalry of arms, while the streets of their towns were unpaved, the towns themselves little more than collections of hovels under the shadow of the feudal castle-while letters were in their infancy, and art, at least in England and France, was non-existent-the cities of Italy, rising out of the ruins of the Roman enpire, had developed all the charms and conveniences of civilised life. They had encircled themselves with lofty walls, carried out gigantic works of irrigation, protected their harbours with moles, covered the exterior of their churches with graceful sculp

constitution was peculiar to itself, as it was for ever at war with some neighbour, and as even its own inhabitants were divided against each other, it may well be imagined that the necessity of intellectual activity was paramount, and that success could only be obtained by ability. In addition to the numerous municipal functions that were open to the citizens, architects and engineers were required to provide the city with public buildings, sculptors and painters to adorn these; while secretaryships to the mary embassies, professorships in the Universities, and tutorships to the ruling families were the natural prizes of men of letters. All these varieties of employment, co-existing within the narrow limits of a single city, necessarily placed the intellect under the highest possible pressure, and account readily for the long start in refinement that the Italians secured among the nations of Europe. On the other hand, the perpetual stress of competition made them hard, narrow, and worldly; the more generous parts of their moral nature had no room for expansion; and, when in the decline of their prosperity the sources of activity diminished, even the keenness of their intellect became dulled for the want of proper occupation.

But while their imaginations were deprived of a national standard, and restricted to the petty range of municipal action, there were ever present before their minds two great and antagonistic ideals. One of these it is needless to say, was the order of the Catholic religion, the potent influences of which may be seen to-day in the most decayed town of Northern Italy. Strong as was the individual and local feeling in the great days of Italian freedom, it is striking to find how much of this personal energy was devoted to the illustration of the wideembracing truths of Christianity. We cannot ascribe this general result to the simple spiritual influences of religion, though how deeply these were felt, in the souls of men accustomed to the compression and intensity of urban faction, may be seen in the hopes and the fears, the loves and the hatreds, so vividly expressed in the 'Divina Commedia.' Rather is it to be explained by the frequent contact of religion with the well-defined but many-sided society included within walls only a few miles in circumference. The genius loci of each city expanded in the ample dogmas, the noble ritual, and the social festivals of the Catholic Church. The stately Duomo and peaceful convent on the banks of the Arno; the perfectly-finished baptistery gate, pulpit column, or chapel screen; the recol

lection of the Florentine guilds with their priors listening to the sermons of the monk Savonarola; all help us to realise the penetrative power of the Church in the constitution of an Italian state. No wonder that in the days of its greatness each corporate city should have employed the pre-eminent sense of beauty, which it possessed in common with all Italians, in the embodiment of what appeared to its citizens patriotism in the noblest form. And stimulating indeed to the imagination of the artist must have been the thought, that generations of his countrymen would come to worship within the walls that he was decorating, and that the perpetuation of his name could only cease with the extinction of the Catholic religion. But at the same time the want of any national principle of action prevented religion from becoming a vital and practical influence in Italian society: piety manifested itself more in monasticism than in charity; it was felt rather as an emotion than as a duty; the typical Italian, like Cellini, was at one time a Piagnone, at another a sensualist.

Against this sense of religious unity, which was undoubtedly shared by the majority of Italians in their respective cities, we must place the wide-spread sentiment of the educated classes, which is at the root of that intellectual movement generally known as the Renaissance, the regret for the lost standards of antiquity. The Italians never forgot that they were the children and the heirs of Rome. It was in great part through Rome's legacy of municipal organisation, and the traditions of her law, that they had so far outstripped the barbarism of surrounding nations. They lived amidst the ruins of baths, aqueducts, theatres, and a thousand mute memorials of departed grandeur. In time they recovered the masterpieces of ancient literature, and envied the ease and serenity of thought in those whom they regarded as their ancestors. It was impossible not to contrast these evidences of imperial majesty with their own feeble and distracted Italy. As they reflected on the past, their mind became full of vague hopes for the future; Rome, imperial or republican, was revived in the Ghibellinism of Dante and the idealism of Rienzi. At a later period, when liberty was lost, the more generous youth filled their imaginations with the Greek doctrines on tyrannicid The philosopher studied to effect a reconciliation between Platonism and Christianity. The artist not only learned the laws of form from antique sculpture, but borrowed subjects from 'assical mythology. And the scholar, carried still further in his enthusi