ners, we must not forget that it
was truly living, full of purpose, and according to its own standard
sincere. It was a new birth; no mere repetition of something dead and
gone, but the product of vivid forces stirred to original creativeness by
admiration for the past. It corresponded, moreover, with exquisite
exactitude to the halting of the conscience between Christianity and
Paganism, and to the blent beauty that the poets loved. On reeds dropped
from the hands of dead Pan the artists of this period, each in his, own
sphere, piped ditties of romance.

To these general remarks upon the style of the first period the Florentine
architects offer an exception; and yet the first marked sign of a new era
in the art of building was given at Florence. Purity of taste and firmness
of judgment, combined with scientific accuracy, were always distinctive of
Florentines. To such an extent did these qualities determine their
treatment of the arts that acute critics have been found to tax them--and
in my opinion justly--with hardness and frigidity.[30] Brunelleschi in
1425 designed the basilica of S. Lorenzo after an original but truly
classic type, remarkable for its sobriety and correctness. What he had
learned from the ruins of Rome he here applied in obedience to his own
artistic instinct. S. Lorenzo is a columnar edifice with round arches and
semicircular apses. Not a form or detail in the whole church is strictly
speaking at variance with Roman precedent; and yet the general effect
resembles nothing we possess of antique work. It is a masterpiece of
intelligent Renaissance adaptation. The same is true of S. Spirito, built
in 1470, after Brunelleschi's death, according to his plans. The
extraordinary capacity of this great architect will, however, win more
homage from ordinary observers when they contemplate the Pitti Palace and
the cupola of the cathedral. Both of these are master-works of personal
originality. What is Roman in the Pitti Palace, is the robust simplicity
of massive strength; but it is certain that no patrician of the republic
or the empire inhabited a house at all resembling this. The domestic
habits of the Middle Ages, armed for self-defence, and on guard against
invasion from without, still find expression in the solid bulk of this
forbidding dwelling-place, although its majesty and largeness show that
the reign of milder and more courtly manners has begun. To speak of the
cupola of the Duomo in connection wi