eived vast impulse from the Crusades, and this trade
became the source of Empire.

Venice, Genoa, and Pisa were now great emporiums of Oriental wares,
were waxing rich on a transport trade which had no option but to use
their ports and their vessels. Inland Florence had no part in maritime
enterprise, but was the manufacturing, literary, and art centre of
mediaeval Europe. Her silk looms made her famous throughout the world,
her banks were the purse of Europe, and among her famous sons were
Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Macchiavelli, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da
Vinci, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci. For the development of their
commerce, the cities of the North had grouped themselves into the
great Hanseatic League, with branches in Bruges, London, Bergen, and
Novgorod. Commercialism had everywhere become the keynote of the
closing Middle Ages, inspiring that maritime enterprise which was soon
to outline a new map of the world.

The main route between the West and East had hitherto been by way of
the Red Sea and the Euphrates, and it was controlled by the Italian
cities. Italy had, therefore, no interest in finding a water route to
the East which would rob her of this profitable overland traffic. But
the experience of her sailors made them the most skilful of the
world's navigators and the readiest instruments of other nations in
expeditions of discovery. Thus Columbus of Genoa, Cabot of Venice, and
Verrazzano of Florence are found accepting commissions from foreign
sovereigns.

"The discoveries of Copernicus and Columbus," says Froude, "created,
not in any metaphor, but in plain language, a new heaven and a new
earth." The new theory of Copernicus was, indeed, one of the choicest
flowers of the Renaissance, and though timidly enunciated, it
revolutionised the world's geography. Further, the discovery of the
polarity of the magnet, and the invention of the astrolabe, gave to
the mariners of the fifteenth century a sense of security lacking to
their fathers, while the kindling flame of the New Learning led them
upon the most daring quests. The Portuguese were the first to enter on
the brilliant path of sea-going exploration which distinguishes this
century above all others. By 1486 they had already found Table
Mountain rising out of the Southern sea, and hoping always for a
passage to the East, had named it the Cape of Good Hope. Spain soon
followed her rival into these unknown regions, a policy due mainly to
the enthusiasm