monuments of antiquity to light,” says Francesco Barbaro. Nor did he hesitate to steal, when theft seemed necessary to secure a precious codex. Three pupils of Manuel Chrysoloras won renown beyond all competitors in the distinguished race: Giovanni Aurispa collected no fewer than two hundred and thirty eight valuable manuscripts of antiquity; Guarino da Verona and Francesco Filelfo came back laden from Byzantium. Drunk with the joy of the new learning, Italy failed to perceive the true inwardness of her acquisitions. She was blind to the peril which they most surely portended. But Rome saw. And, during many years, Rome had lifted up her voice and cried aloud that Italy enjoyed these accessions to her treasure only because Byzantium was no longer a safe repository for them. During many decades, Rome proclaimed the danger implied by the advance of the Muslim Infidel. But Christendom lent deaf ears, and compared Rome to Kassandra. Then Immortal Rome was lulled into a kind of apathy: her voice was heard less frequently, speaking in feebler, in less insistent tone. And, gradually, the potent spell of the Renascence mastered Rome; and, in the reign of the Lord Nicholas P.P. V.[4] she fell a victim to the fashionable delirium. Churches and palaces were planned, and builded, and decorated. Manuscripts were collected, collated, copied. Libraries and colleges were formed. Culture, at last, and for once, was supreme; and the phenomenon of needy genius was unknown. It was an age when the demand for learning, and for the fine arts, exceeded the supply. Then, Rome knew that the beautiful may be purchased at too dear a price; that its essential evanescence needs the safeguard of virtue and of heroism, of honour and of arms; precisely as woman needs the protection of man. Rome perceived that the irruption of the Muslim Infidel was a menace to civilisation, and she cried on Christendom to resist the flood of barbarism now outpoured. Hungary, alone of all the Occidental Powers, responded; but then Hungary was actually in the Muslim clutch. England, lately torn by Jack Cade’s rebellion, was entering upon a conflict bloodier than any American Civil War or Boer Revolt. The reign of King Henry VI. Plantagenet, gentlest saint that ever wore an earthly diadem, drew near its close: from those pale prayer-raised hands—holy hands that had lifted to Christ’s Vicar a petition for the canonisation of England’s Hero, King Ælfred the Great[5]—the sceptre was about to fall. Trumpets were sounding from Northumberland to Kent. The clean air of Yorkshire wolds sang with the hissing of cloth-yard shafts, with the clang of steel of lance on shield. England was an armed camp; and the War of the Roses was begun.