nists
inaugurated. No less futile were it to waste declamatory tears upon the
strife of absolutism with new-fledged democracy, or to vaticinate a
reign of socialistic terror for the immediate future. We have to
recognize that man cannot be other than what he makes himself; and he
makes himself in obedience to immutable although unwritten laws, whereof
he only of late years became dimly conscious. It is well, then, while
reflecting on the lessons of some deeply studied epoch in world-history,
to regard the developments with which we have been specially occupied,
no less than the ephemeral activity of each particular individual, as
factors in a universal process, whereof none sees the issue, but which,
willing or unwilling, each man helps to further. We shall then
acknowledge that a contest between Conservatism and Liberalism, between
established order and the order that is destined to replace it, between
custom and innovation, constitutes the essence of vitality in human
affairs. The nations by turns are protagonists in the drama of progress;
by turns are doomed to play the part of obstructive agents. Intermingled
in conflict which is active life, they contribute by their phases of
declension and resistance, no less than by their forward movements, to
the growth of an organism which shall probably in the far future be
coextensive with the whole human race.

III.

These considerations are suggested to us by the subject I have handled
in this work. The first five volumes were devoted to showing how Italy,
in the Renaissance, elaborated a new way of regarding man and the world,
a new system of education, new social manners, and a new type of culture
for herself and Europe. This was her pioneer's work in the period of
transition from the middle ages; and while she was engaged in it, all
classes, from popes and princes down to poetlings and pedants, seemed
for a while to have lost sight of Catholic Christianity. They were
equally indifferent to that corresponding and contemporary movement
across the Alps, which is known as Reformation. They could not discern
the close link of connection which binds Renaissance to Reformation.
Though at root identical in tendency towards freedom, these stirrings of
the modern spirit assumed externally such diverse forms as made them
reciprocally repellent. Only one European nation received both impulses
simultaneously. That was England, which adopted Protestantism and
produced the literatu