ch mark off definite periods and divide
what has been from what is beginning. Hellenism was such a landmark
in antiquity, the Renaissance in the Middle Ages.

Without overlooking the differences between Greek and Italian,
classic and modern, which are relative and not absolute, it is
instructive to note the great likeness between these two epochs. The
limits of their culture will stand out more clearly, if, by the aid
of Helbig's researches and Burckhardt's masterly account of the
Renaissance, we range the chief points of that likeness side by side.

They were epochs in which an icy crust, which had been lying over
human thought and feeling, melted as if before a spring breeze. It is
true that the theory of life which now began to prevail was not
absolutely new; the stages of growth in a nation's culture are never
isolated; it was the result of the enlargement of various factors
already present, and their fusion with a flood of incoming ones.

The Ionic-Doric Greek kingdom widened out in Alexander's time to a
Hellenic-Asiatic one, and the barriers of the Romano-Germanic Middle
Ages fell with the Crusades and the great voyages of discovery.
Hellenism and the Renaissance brought about the transition from
antiquity and the mediaeval to the specifically modern; the Roman
Empire inherited Hellenism, the Reformation the Renaissance. Both had
their roots in the past, both made new growth which blossomed at a
later time. In Hellenism, Oriental elements were mixed with the
Greek; in the Renaissance, it was a mixture of Germanic with the
native Italian which caused the revival of classic antiquity and new
culture. Burckhardt says[1]:

Elsewhere in Europe men deliberately and with reflection borrowed
this or the other element of classical civilization; in Italy,
the sympathies both of the learned and of the people were
naturally engaged on the side of antiquity as a whole, which
stood to them as a symbol of past greatness. The Latin language
too was easy to an Italian, and the numerous monuments and
documents in which the country abounded facilitated a return to
the past. With this tendency, other elements--the popular
character which time had now greatly modified, the political
institutions imported by the Lombards from Germany, chivalry and
northern forms of civilization, and the influence of religion and
the Church--combined to produce the modern Italian spirit, which
was