which preferred the flowery mead to the tree of knowledge. The spirit of the age was ponderous and prosaic, and the few who attempted to rise above its denser atmosphere into poetic regions were clogged by the trammels of a dead language, and by obsolete associations which they dared not shake off. The fifteenth century was consequently rich in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius, and barren of strong thinkers. These circumstances necessarily detract from the popular interest of Italian literary history at this important period, all influential to its after destinies, and we mention them in the conviction that general readers must feel disappointed with this portion of our work. The vast mass of materials then created now reposes in the principal storehouses of learning, much of it unpublished, and but a small part rendered accessible in recent editions. As it would be an unprofitable task to labour upon these materials for merely critical purposes, we have for the most part satisfied ourselves with an examination of the authors immediately connected with Urbino; nor shall we be tempted much beyond that narrow limit, by the facility of borrowing from those copious and intelligent writers who have successfully investigated the intellectual progress of Italy. The revival of civilisation, and its handmaid arts, is a problem so inexplicable on the ordinary principles which regulate human progress,[64]--its causes were so complex, and many of them so remote, and singly so little striking,--that it were, perhaps, vain to hope for a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. It may be, that the ever revolving cycle of human affairs had brought round a period predestined to intellectual development, or that mind, awakening from the slumber of centuries, possessed the energies of renewed youth. But in a season of universal and sudden progress it is difficult to distinguish between cause and effect,--to decide whether mind aroused liberty, or if freedom was the nurse of intelligence.