things, starving for the love which was given only to
God.

The explanation, therefore, and its lesson, may thus be summed up in the
one word Wastefulness. And the fruitfulness of the Renaissance, all that
it has given to us of art, of thought, of feeling (for the "Vita Nuova"
is its fruit), is due, as it seems to me, to the fact that the
Renaissance is simply the condition of civilization when, thanks to the
civil liberty and the spiritual liberty inherited from Rome and
inherited from Greece, man's energies of thought and feeling were
withdrawn from the unknowable to the knowable, from Heaven to Earth; and
were devoted to the developing of those marvellous new things which
Antiquity had not known, and which had lain neglected and wasted during
the Middle Ages.

FLORENCE, _January_,1884.

APPENDIX.

I have seen the pictures and statues and towns which I have described,
and I have read the books of which I attempt to give an impression; but
here my original research, if such it may be called, comes to an end. I
have trusted only to myself for my impressions; but I have taken from
others everything that may be called historical fact, as distinguished
from the history of this or that form of thought or of art which I have
tried to elaborate. My references are therefore only to standard
historical works, and to such editions of poets and prose writers as
have come into my hands. How much I am endebted to the genius of
Michelet; nay, rather, how much I am, however unimportant, the thing
made by him, every one will see and judge. With regard to positive
information I must express my great obligations to the works of Jacob
Burckhardt, of Prof. Villari, and of Mr. J.A. Symonds in everything that
concerns the political history and social condition of the Renaissance.
Mr. Symonds' name I have placed last, although this is by no means the
order of importance in which the three writers appear in my mind,
because vanity compels me to state that I have deprived myself of the
pleasure and profit of reading his volumes on Italian literature, from a
fear that finding myself doubtless forestalled by him in various
appreciations, I might deprive my essays of what I feel to be their
principal merit, namely, the spontaneity and wholeness of personal
impression. With regard to philological lore, I may refer, among a
number of other works, to M. Gaston Paris' work on the Cycle of
Charlemagne, M. de la Villemarque's companion vol