The literary development, if it does not quite keep pace with the pictorial, nevertheless attains heights which it has only once before reached since classical times. All this culture development in a time of turmoil and political disaster seems anomalous, and, as just intimated, can only be explained as the fruitage of a development which had its origin in an earlier epoch. The validity of this explanation is illustrated in the rapid decline that takes place in Italy after the middle of the sixteenth century--an intellectual decline which is scarcely to be interrupted until the nineteenth century. THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES After the wonderful development of the sixteenth century it is amazing to consider this time of deterioration. The day of great men is not altogether past--witness Galileo--but there are no such great poets, historians, artists, as in past generations. Even the events of the political world have small world-historical importance. Italy is the battle-ground of nations; it is a geographical territory but it is scarcely a state. It has no unity, it has no individuality; it has no important autonomous states as a whole that command the attention of the historian. The intellectual sceptre which Italy so long swayed has been passed on to the nations of the north. The ecclesiastical spirit is everywhere dominant. The burning of Giordano Bruno in the last year of the sixteenth century and the persecution of Galileo for daring to uphold the new Copernican conception of cosmogony are typical features of the epoch. Chronologically the mediæval era is past, but the spirit of mediævalism still pertains in Italy; rather let us say that this unfortunate country has lapsed back into an archaic cast of thought after having led the world for generations. The historian must note the play and counterplay of outside nations who use the territory of Italy as their chess-board, but as regards the Italian himself the world historian might virtually disregard his existence during many generations. It is only towards the close of the eighteenth century when Italy came under the sway of Napoleon that there came about a reaction from the overbearing policy of this new tyrant; then a desire for liberty began to make itself felt in Italy, and to prepare the way for that struggle of a half century later which was to weld the disunited subject principalities into a unified and autonomous kingdom. But the intimations of this later development could hardly be appreciated by the contemporary observer who saw Italy ground beneath the heel of Napoleon, with no seeming chance of ever escaping from this humiliating position. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY