lians be called the chosen and peculiar
vessels of the prophecy of the Renaissance. In art, in scholarship, in
science, in the mediation between antique culture and the modern
intellect, they took the lead, handing to Germany and France and
England the restored humanities complete. Spain and England have since
done more for the exploration and colonization of the world. Germany
achieved the labor of the Reformation almost single-handed. France has
collected, centralized, and diffused intelligence with irresistible
energy. But if we return to the first origins of the Renaissance, we
find that, at a time when the rest of Europe was inert, Italy had
already begun to organize the various elements of the modern spirit, and
to set the fashion whereby the other great nations should learn and
live.

CHAPTER II.

ITALIAN HISTORY.

The special Difficulties of this Subject--Apparent Confusion--Want of
leading Motive--The Papacy--The Empire--The Republics--The Despots--The
People--The Dismemberment of Italy--Two main Topics--The Rise of the
Communes--Gothic Kingdom--Lombards--Franks--Germans--The Bishops--The
Consuls--The Podestas--Civil Wars--Despots--The Balance of Power--The
Five Italian States--The Italians fail to achieve National Unity--The
Causes of this Failure--Conditions under which it might have been
achieved--A Republic--A Kingdom--A Confederation--A Tyranny--The Part
played by the Papacy.

After a first glance into Italian history the student recoils
as from a chaos of inscrutable confusion. To fix the moment of
transition from ancient to modern civilization seems impossible. There
is no formation of a new people, as in the case of Germany or France or
England, to serve as starting-point. Differ as the Italian races do in
their original type; Gauls, Ligurians, Etruscans, Umbrians, Latins,
Iapygians, Greeks have been fused together beneath the stress of Roman
rule into a nation that survives political mutations and the disasters
of barbarian invasions. Goths, Lombards, and Franks blend successively
with the masses of this complex population, and lose the outlines of
their several personalities. The western Empire melts imperceptibly
away. The Roman Church grows no less imperceptibly, and forms the Holy
Roman Empire as the equivalent of its own spiritual greatness in the
sphere of secular authority. These two institutions, the crowning
monuments of Italian creative genius, dominate the Middle Ages, powerfu