Difficulty of fixing Date--Meaning of Word Renaissance--The Emancipation of the Reason--Relation of Feudalism to the Renaissance--Mediaeval Warnings of the Renaissance--Abelard, Bacon, Joachim of Flora, the Provencals, the Heretics, Frederick II.--Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio--Physical Energy of the Italians--The Revival of Learning--The Double Discovery of the World and of Man--Exploration of the Universe and of the Globe--Science--The Fine Arts and Scholarship--Art Humanizes the Conceptions of the Church--Three Stages in the History of Scholarship--The Age of Desire--The Age of Acquisition--The Legend of Julia's Corpse--The Age of the Printers and Critics--The Emancipation of the Conscience--The Reformation and the Modern Critical Spirit--Mechanical Inventions--The Place of Italy in the Renaissance. The word Renaissance has of late years received a more extended significance than that which is implied in our English equivalent--the Revival of Learning. We use it to denote the whole transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern World; and though it is possible to assign certain limits to the period during which this transition took place, we cannot fix on any dates so positively as to say--between this year and that the movement was accomplished. To do so would be like trying to name the days on which spring in any particular season began and ended Yet we speak of spring as different from winter and from summer. The truth is, that in many senses we are still in mid-Renaissance. The evolution has not been completed. The new life is our own and is progressive. As in the transformation scene of some great Masque, so here the waning and the waxing shapes are mingled; the new forms, at first shadowy and filmy, gain upon the old; and now both blend; and now the old scene fades into the background; still, who shall say whether the new scene be finally set up?