beautiful”; that “high civilisation is generally immoral.” The age of the Renascence, which found nothing shameful in the profession of the ἑταίρα (if we may judge from the epitaph of one, _Imperia, Cortisana Romana, quae digna tanto nomine, rarae inter homines formae specimen dedit. Vixit a. XXVI. d. XII. Objit MDXL. die XV. Aug._), though free from the hypocrisy engendered by the German Reformation of a later date (which the maxim “Si non caste tamen caute” so admirably describes), was frankly and unblushingly unmoral, as far as a proportion of its leaders was concerned. Yet its unmorality was kept within certain bounds, and circumscribed by a force which, now, is no restraint. Printing was in its infancy. Written books were few, and very costly. In Milan, a city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, there were only fifty copyists. Not till 1465, in the reign of the Lord Paul P.P. II, was there a printing-press in Italy, at Subjaco in the Sabine Hills; while Florence had no press till 1471. And, at first, printed books were regarded with disfavour by reason of their cheapness. One rich man said that he would be ashamed to have them in his library, as now a rich man would be ashamed to have Brummagem electro instead of hall-marked silver. Yet, by means of ambulant printers, who printed only one page at a time on a hand-press in a mule-cart (and who were the pioneers of that curse to real civilization, the printed book), before 1500 no fewer than 4987 works had been printed in Italy alone. Here again the fifteenth century passion for perfect workmanship came into play. Look at an Aldine Classic, and mark its exquisite form. Messer Aldo Manuzio of Venice set a great artist, Messer Francesco Raibolini (detto II Francia), who painted the dulcet Pietá in the National Gallery, to cut a fount of type after the lovely handwriting of the poet Petrarch. That is the Aldine, or original Italic type; the script of a fourteenth-century singer. Can the twentieth century, with its manifold appliances, its labour-saving machinery, better that handiwork, or approach that design; or would a Royal Academician condescend to cut types for a printer! Look at the portrait-medals and pictures of the day to see of what fashion were these elaborately simple men of the fifteenth century:—The English type, sturdy, recondite, and simple; the French type, simple and light and vain; the Italian, subtle and simple and strong—an English Hospitaller, a French cardinal, an Italian scholar called, The Phoenix of Genius; John Kendal, Grand Prior of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem in England; Cardinal-Archbishop Georges d’Amboise; and Messer Giovanni Pico della Mirandola; on their medals in the British, and Victoria and Albert, Museums. The painters of this era, after Giotto, had emancipated themselves from the domination of the Church. They refused any longer to be bound by that decree of the Council of Nicaea (a.d. 787), which