[Footnote 9: Vespasiano, _Vita di Piero de' Pazzi_. Compare the beautiful letter of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini to his nephew (_Ep. Lib._ i. 4). He reminds the young man that fair as youth is, and delightful as are the pleasures of the May of life, learning is more fair and knowledge more delightful. 'Non enim Lucifer aut Hesperus tam pulcher est quam sapientia quæ studiis acquiritur litterarum.'] It is not without real reason that these Hellenic parallels confront us in the study of Italian Renaissance. Florence borrowed her light from Athens, as the moon shines with rays reflected from the sun. The Revival was the silver age of that old golden age of Greece. In a literal, not a merely metaphorical sense, the fifteenth century witnessed a new birth of the classic spirit. And what, let us ask ourselves, since here at last is the burning point of our inquiry, what was the true note of this spirit, in so far as its recovery concerned the Italian race? Superficial observers will speak of the Paganism of the Renaissance, its unblushing license, its worldliness, its self-satisfied sensuality, as though that were all, as though these qualities were not inherent in human nature, ready at any moment to emerge when the strain of nobler enthusiasm is relaxed, or the self-preservative instincts of society are enfeebled. There is indeed a truth in this rough and ready answer, which requires to be stated on the threshold. The contact of the modern with the ancient world did encourage a profligate and godless mode of living in men who preferred Petronius to S. Paul, and yearned less after Galilee than Corinth. The humanists were distinguished even above the Roman clergy for open disorder in their lives. They developed filthy speaking as a special branch of rhetoric, and professed the science of recondite and obsolete obscenity. It was just this fashion of the learned classes that made Erasmus mistrust the importation of scholarship into the North. 'One scruple still besets my mind,' he wrote, 'lest under the cloak of revived literature Paganism should strive to raise its head, there being among Christians men who, while they recognise the name of Christ, breathe in their hearts the spirit of the Gentiles.' Christianity, especially in Italy, where the spectacle of the Holy See inspired disgust, had been prostituted to the vilest service by the Church.[10] Faith was associated with folly, superstition, ignorance, intolerance, and cruelty. The manners of the clergy were in flagrant discord with the Gospel, and Antichrist found fitter incarnation in Roderigo Borgia than in Nero. While the essence of religion was thus sacrificed by its professors, there appeared upon the horizon of the modern world, like some bright blazing star, the ideal of that Pagan civilisation against which in its decadence the ascendant force of Christianity had striven. It was not unnatural that a reaction in favour of Paganism, now that the Church had been found wanting, should