Monastic libraries, in obedience to the demands of the public voice, yielded up their treasures of ancient literature, whilst the soil of Italy was made to disgorge its mutilated fragments of antique art. The effects of these sudden, unexpected, and precious acquisitions may readily be imagined; they created a complete revolution in literature and art throughout Italy, which spread thence into other countries. The two beautiful arts of Painting and Sculpture saw with emulative shame their present inferiority in the ranks of Art; and in their noble aspirations towards the perfection newly placed before them, they assumed their position as distinct and legitimate creations. But if the Gothic system was now dying out, it had left at least one valuable legacy to the future, in its appreciation and adoption of natural models. The Italian artists of the 15th century received the gift joyfully, and, combining it with what treasures antiquity afforded them, produced a style which, in sculpture especially, has all the freshness of nature and the refinement of the antique, as both were capable of being united by the gifted men whose names have come down in glory to our own day, and will command the admiration of the latest posterity. [Illustration: Entrance to Renaissance Court.] On no branch of art did the revival of the antique more strongly act than on the art of architecture; the Gothic style, which had never taken deep root in the soil of classic Italy, speedily fell altogether in that country before the recent discovery and imitation of the Roman antiquities. No powerful body of Freemasons was there, as in England, France, and Germany, to oppose the progress of the new style; and the individual energy of such men as Brunelleschi, Bramante, and the great architects of the northern states, soon established it on an indestructible basis. And, however much a partisan spirit may decry this or that particular style, the productions influenced by the revival of the antique, throughout the 15th century, especially in architecture and sculpture, will never fail to excite our astonishment and emulation. [Illustration: Arcade of Hôtel Bourgtheroulde at Rouen.]