During many years, since the first signs of Muslim activity, fugitives from Byzantium descended upon Italian shores. The glory of Greece had gone to Imperial Rome. The grandeur of Imperial Rome had returned to Byzantium. And now the glory and grandeur of Byzantium was going to Christian Rome. When danger menaced, when the day of stress began to dawn, scholars and cunning artificers, experts skilful in all knowledge, fled westward to the open arms of Italy with their treasures of work. Italy welcomed all who could enlarge, illuminate, her transcendent genius; learning and culture and skill found with her not exile but a home, and a market for wares. Scholarship became the fashion. “Literary taste was the regulative principle.” It was the Age of Acquisition. “Tuscan is hardly known to all Italians, but Latin is spread far and wide throughout the world”; said Filelfo. But to know Greek was the real test of a gentleman of that day; and Greek scholars were Italy’s most honoured guests. Not content with the codices and classics of antiquity that these brought with them, Italian princes and patricians sent embassies to falling Byzantium, to search for manuscripts, inscriptions, or carven gems, and bronze, and marble. Greek intaglii and camei graced the finger-rings, the ouches, collars, caps, of Venetian senators, of the lords of Florence, of the sovereigns of the Regno,[3] of the barons and cardinals and popes of Rome. “They had made the discovery that the body of a man is a miracle of beauty, each limb a divine wonder, each muscle a joy as great as sight of stars or flowers.” Messer Filippo Brunelleschi, who truly said that his figure of Christ was a crucified contadino, erected the marvellous dome of Florence. For the Lord Eugenius P.P. IV, Messer Antonio Filarete carved the Rapes of Leda and Ganumedes on the great bronze gates of St. Peter’s. Messer Lorenzo Ghiberti modelled the marvellous doors of the Baptistery. Messer Simone Fiorentino (detto Donatello) placed, on the north wall of Orsanmichele, his superb St. George in marble; and cast in bronze for Duke Cosmo the nitid David of the Bargello. Tommaso di Ser Giovanni degli Scheggia, called Masaccio (great hulking Tom), painted St. Peter and St. Paul raising the dead, with the skill which he learned from Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini, called Masolino (pretty little Tom). Paolo Doni, nicknamed Uccello (Bird), put birds into his pictures according to his wont. The Blessed Giovangelico da Fiesole filled triptychs with his visions of the angelic hierarchy. Fra Filippo Lippi painted the St. Gabriel Archangel with the argus-eyed wings in an admirable Annunciation. Petrarch and Boccaccio hunted convents, abbeys, and museums, of Byzantium for codices. Messer Poggio Bracciolini discovered manuscripts of Lucretius Carus, of Vitruvius, of Quinctillian, and Cicero’s Oration _For Caecina_. “No severity of winter cold, no snow, no length of journey, no roughness of road, prevented him from bringing the