the history of the amphibious Republic, all the sumptuousness of the East, but even in such an exotic scheme the architecture still relies on Imperial Rome, which had itself absorbed many Eastern elements. Torcello, Trieste, Murano, show as clearly as the Lombard communes the slow process of evolution that was to lead to the Renaissance. Byzantine elements are not as alien as Gothic to Roman tradition. The contemporary jurists had shown the great contribution of Byzantium to the development of Roman law, and Byzantine motives were assimilated more easily than those from the North. The Roman legions had brought the great expanses of the North into the orbit of history, but though they left deep and undying traces behind them, they were unable to destroy the virile qualities of the Northern races. So when Christianity brought a new intuition of life to the Western world it developed locally according to the tendencies of the various nations. The result was bound to be more original where men were less influenced by the old Pagan culture and further from the mentality that had produced it, among peoples who “_a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt_.” Even though their growth was to be slower in some respects, such as the cultural, such peoples were bound to absorb more completely the full import of the new faith and thus produce a thoroughly original civilisation. It was, therefore, necessary in order to glorify the new religion to produce an art as novel as the civilisation which inspired it. In contrast to this affirmation of an entirely new mentality Italy was influenced by the Roman traditions that weighed upon her; they stimulated a premature efflorescence that exhausted her virility for centuries. Her people were not forced to elaborate afresh all the elements of life; the Church had preserved for them the framework of Roman life and law. Thus the energy expanded in France and in England in working out a radically new society and civilisation, in Italy drifted partly into adapting the old formulas to the new necessities and partly into acquiring a deeper consciousness of the intimate relations with the past.