The eighteenth century was a period of recovery for Italy. The ancient lustre of literature, indeed, was but feebly rekindled; and fine art, with the exception of music, which rose to unexampled heights, sank lower and lower. But an invigorating breath pervaded the nation; men wrote and thought in comparative freedom; and if pedantry and frivolity still reigned in many quarters, the sway of outrageous bad taste had departed. Political and spiritual tyranny were still enthroned, and religion and politics could only be handled with great caution; yet reform was more hardy and oppression less assured than of yore. Italy rose slowly from her abasement, like a trodden flower resuming its erect attitude, bruised but not crushed, feeble but not inanimate, obeying a natural impulse by which she could not fail to right herself in time. The chief cause of Italian regeneration, so far as peculiar to the country, and unconnected with that general movement towards liberty and toleration which, originating in England, was gradually transforming Europe, was the disappearance of the Spanish dominion, which had for two centuries inflicted every political and spiritual evil upon Italy without conferring a single benefit in return. A Spanish dynasty did, indeed, in 1734 re-establish itself in the Two Sicilies, but no longer a dynasty of viceroys; it regarded itself as Italian, and was served by Italian administrators. Lombardy slumbered under the comparatively benign sway of Austria. There was as yet little patriotic resentment against foreign domination as such; Austria was inert and unaggressive, and Italy’s princes and people felt conscious of a great deliverance. It was no time for violent intellectual exercise, but for quiet and gradual revival. The convalescing country could not be expected to vie with the intellectual development of England and France, but her progress was in the same direction. Within the Alps, as beyond them, the age, save in music, was unimaginative. It created little, but brought much to light. Its most potent intellects, the Kants, Lessings, Diderots, Butlers, Humes, were turned towards criticism or moral science. So it was in Italy, where the current of the most powerful thought ran strongly in the direction of history and jurisprudence, state reform and public economy. Vico, Giannone, Beccaria, Filangieri, Genovesi, Galiani are its representatives. Closely allied to these, but devoid of their originality, are the investigators of the past and the critical lawgivers of their own day, the Muratoris, Crescimbenis, Maffeis, Mazzuchellis, and Tiraboschis. Nor must the academical movement be left out of sight, which, if impotent to create good literature, at all events kept its traditions alive. Lastly, the development of music reacted on the lyrical drama, which kindled the other branches of the dramatic art into activity, and for a time made the Italian drama, tragic, comic, and operatic, the most interesting in Europe.