rom land to sea. The resources of the ocean world extended
the physical basis of modern History; and increase of wealth,
involving increase of power, depended thenceforward on the control
of distant regions. Vasco da Gama created a broad channel for the
pursuit of Empire, and Columbus remodelled the future of the world.
For History is often made by energetic men, steadfastly following
ideas, mostly wrong, that determine events.

III

THE RENAISSANCE

NEXT TO the discovery of the New World, the recovery of the ancient
world is the second landmark that divides us from the Middle Ages and
marks the transition to modern life. The Renaissance signifies the
renewed study of Greek, and the consequences that ensued from it,
during the century and a half between Petrarca and Erasmus. It had
survived, as a living language, among Venetian colonists and
Calabrian monks, but exercised no influence on literature.

The movement was preceded by a Roman revival, which originated with
Rienzi. Rome had been abandoned by the Papacy, which had moved from
the Tiber to the Rhone, where it was governed by Frenchmen from
Cahors, and had fallen, like any servile country, into feudal hands.
Rienzi restored the Republic, revived the self-government of the city,
the memories attached to the Capitol, the inscriptions, the monuments
of the men who had ruled the world. The people, no longer great
through the Church, fell back on the greatness which they inherited
from ancient times. The spell by which the Tribune directed their
palm was archaeology. In front of the Capitoline temple, near the
Tapeian rock and the She Wolf's cave, he proclaimed their rights
over the empire and the nations; and he invited the people of Italy
to a national parliament for the restoration of Italian unity and of
the ancient glory and power of Rome. Patriotism, national
independence, popular liberty, all were founded on antiquarian studies
and the rhetorical interpretation of the fragments of the Lex Regia.

Thee political scheme of Rienzi failed, but it started a movement in
the world of thought deeper and more enduring than State transactions.
For his ideas were adopted by the greatest writer then living, and
were expounded by him in the most eloquent and gracious prose that had
been heard for a thousand years. Petrarca called the appearance of
the patriotic tribune and rhetorician the dawn of a new world and a
golden age. Like him, he desired to purg