[Footnote *64: The secret is not far to seek, but it was inexplicably hidden from men in Dennistoun's day. The continuity of life and of art the most sensitive expression of life, is understood and acknowledged by too few among us; but that there is an historical continuity in art as in life would be easy to prove, since no part can be adequately grasped or explained save in relation to the whole. Of course, as Renan admitted, history has its sad days, but all are, as it were, a part of the year which would be incomplete and inexplicable without them. Thus there is no gulf fixed between the art of Greece and the art of the Middle Age or the Renaissance; each is an inevitable part of the whole, and the later was what it was because of the old. Burckhardt, one of the greatest students of our time, seems to have understood this also with his usual happiness. M. Auguste Gerard tells us in his notice of the life of its author, which serves as a Preface to the French edition of _Le Cicerone_, that "Burckhardt en vrai disciple de la Renaissance considérait l'Italie comme un tout continu; et dans l'histoire de l'art de même que dans l'énumération des oeuvres, il ne séparait pas l'Italie antique de l'Italie moderne. La section du _Cicerone_ qui était dédiée à l'architecture commençait aux temples de Paestum pour finir aux villas Napolitaines et Génoises des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles." In that idea lies the future of all criticism.] The feeble hold which the popes retained over their temporal power during their residence at Avignon, and during the great schism, promoted the independence of the ecclesiastical cities, many of which then passed under the dominion of domestic tyrants, or assumed the privileges of self-government. In either case the result was favourable to an expansion of the human mind. The sway of the seigneurs, being based on no such aristocratic machinery as supported the fabric of feudalism, threw fewer obstructions in the way of individual merit. The popular communities could only exist by a diffusion of political and legislative capacity, and the commercial enterprises to which they in general devoted their energies increased at once the demand for public spirit and its production. Even those intestine revolutions to which democracies were especially subject contributed largely to the same end; for, although in such convulsions the dregs of the populace often rise to the surface, talent, when backed by energy and daring, there finds extraordinary opportunities for display. Indeed, the multiplication of commonwealths, under whatever form of government, tended, in a country situated as the Italian Peninsula then was, to the development of intellect. Defended by the Alps and the sea from invasion, their physical and intellectual advantages constituted an influence which supplied the want of union and nationality. They thus could safely pursue their individual aims, and even indulge