_Establishment of Swiss Independence (A.D.1499)_ HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE _Amerigo Vespucci in America (A.D.1499)_ AMERIGO VESPUCCI _Rise and Fall of the Borgias (A.D.1502)_ NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI _Painting of the Sistine Chapel (A.D.1508)_ _The Splendor of Renaissance Art under Michelangelo_ CHARLES CLEMENT _Balboa Discovers the Pacific (A.D.1513)_ MANUEL JOSE QUINTANA _Universal Chronology (A.D.1438-1516)_ JOHN RUDD ILLUSTRATIONS VOLUME VIII _Murder of the princes, sons of King Edward IV, in _the Tower of London (page 194)1_ Painting by Otto Seitz. _Facsimile of a page from Caxton's_ Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye--_the first book printed in the English language_ _Louis XI at his devotions in the castle of Péronne while held a prisoner by Charles the Bold_ Painting by Hermann Kaulbach. _Pope Sixties V and the Grand Inquisitor_ Painting by Jean Paul Laurens. AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF THE GREAT EVENTS (THE LATER RENAISSANCE: FROM GUTENBERG TO THE REFORMATION) CHARLES F. HORNE The Renaissance marks the separation of the mediaeval from the modern world. The wide difference between the two epochs of Teutonic history arises, we are apt somewhat glibly to say, from the fact that our ancestors worshipped and were ruled by brute force, whereas we follow the broad light of intellect. Perhaps both statements require modification; yet in a general way they do suggest the change which by a thousand different agencies has, in the course of the last four centuries, been forced upon the world. Mediaeval Europe was a land not of equals, but of lords and slaves. The powerful nobles regarded themselves as of wholly different clay from the hapless peasants whom they trampled under foot, serfs so ignorant, so brutalized by want, that they were often little better than the beasts with which they herded. Gradually the tradesmen, the middle classes, forced their way to practical equality with the nobles. Then came the turn of the masses to do the same. The beginnings of the merchants' movement we have already traced in the preceding volumes; the end of the peasants' effort is perhaps even to-day scarce yet accomplished.