t of interest
common to all. Piety, superstition, pride, emulation, all alike called
for art in which their spirit should be embodied. The imagination
answered to the call. The eyes of the artist were once more opened to
see the beauty of life, and his hand sought to reproduce it. The bonds
of tradition were broken. The Greek marble vase on the platform of the
Duomo at Pisa taught Niccola Pisano the right methods of sculpture, and
directed him to the source of his art in the study of nature. His work
was a new wonder and delight, and showed the way along which many
followed him. Painting took her lesson from sculpture, and before the
end of the century both arts had become responsive to the demand of the
time, and had entered upon that course of triumph which was not to end
till, three centuries later, chisel and brush dropped from hands
enfeebled in the general decline of national vigor, and incapable of
resistance to the tyrannous and exclusive autocracy of the printed
page.

But it was not only the new birth of sentiment and emotion which
quickened these arts: it was also the aroused curiosity of men
concerning themselves, their history, and the earth. They felt their own
ignorance. The vast region of the unknown, which encircled with its
immeasurable spaces the little tract of the known world, appealed to
their fancy and their spirit of enterprise, with its boundless promise
and its innumerable allurements to adventure. Learning, long confined
and starved in the cell of the monk, was coming out into the open world,
and was gathering fresh stores alike from the past and the present. The
treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of the Greeks were eagerly sought,
especially in translations of Aristotle,--translations which, though
imperfect indeed, and disfigured by numberless misinterpretations and
mistakes, nevertheless contained a body of instruction invaluable as a
guide and stimulant to the awakened intelligence. Encyclopedic compends
of knowledge put at the disposition of students all that was known or
fancied in the various fields of science. The division between knowledge
and belief was not sharply drawn, and the wonders of legend and of fable
were accepted with as ready a faith as the actual facts of observation
and of experience. Travelers for gain or for adventure, and missionaries
for the sake of religion, were venturing to lands hitherto unvisited.
The growth of knowledge, small as it was compared with later