The Italy of the Renaissance divested Christianity of its spirit of self-renunciation, of its Jewish-Asiatic character, and transformed it into a mythology, fragrant of incense, wreathed with flowers. Italian Catholicism allied itself with the civic spirit in the cities, and with all the fine arts when art was born again. Thus its interests were quite as often promoted from patriotic as from religious motives. It was in Tuscany that the Renaissance began. There humanity was born again after its fall, its renegation of Nature. There the first Italian republics were founded. There men once more willed; houses congregated and formed small, proud, indomitably liberal states, each a town with its surrounding district. Towers and spires rose into the air, erect and proud as the bearing of a free man; fortified palaces were begun, churches were completed; but the church was far more a state treasure-house, a witness to wealth, perseverance, and artistic taste, a valuable item in the rivalry between state and state, between Siena and Florence, than a dwelling-place of "Our Most Blessed Lady." Much more was done in honour of Siena than in honour of God. A Tuscan church, such as that of Orvieto, with its mosaics inlaid in gold, or that of Siena, with its façade of sculptured marble resembling the lace robe of some youthful beauty, is to us much more of a jewel-casket than a church. Or think of the Church of St. Mark in Venice. The first time one sees it, one feels momentarily surprised by its oriental façade, its bright cupolas, its peculiar arches resting on pile upon pile of short, clustered pillars of red and green marble. After casting a glance from the piazza at the mosaics of the outside walls, rich colours on a golden ground, one enters, and one's first thought is: Why, this is all gold, golden vaulting, golden walls! The minute gilt tesseræ composing the mosaic background of all the pictures form one great plane of gold. A sunbeam falling upon it produces sparkling flecks upon the darker ground, and the whole church seems aflame. The floor, undulating with age, is composed of a mosaic of red, green, white, and black marble. The pillars, which are of reddish marble, have capitals of gilded bronze. The small arched windows are of white, not stained glass; coloured windows would be unsuitable with all this magnificence; they are for less gorgeous churches. The pillars are alternated with enormous square columns of greenish marble, at least six yards in diameter, which support gilded half-arches; each cupola rests upon four such half-arches. The smaller pillars which support altars, &c., are, some of green and red speckled marble, some of transparent alabaster. All the lower-lying marble, that, for instance, of the seats and benches running along the sides of the church and surrounding the columns, is of a bright red colour. The whole church, as seems only natural in a town whose school of painting so entirely