medieval literature and poetry; its jurists rejected the feudal in favour of the Roman legal code, its politicians representative forms in favour of absolute lordship and monarchy. It was then that first appeared the conception of the Middle Ages as a whole, opposed to another whole, formed of the ancient and the ancient-modern, into which the Middle Ages were inserted like an irksome and painful wedge. The word 'medieval' was certainly late in appearing as an official designation, employed in the divisions and titles of histories (toward the end of the seventeenth century, as it would seem, in the manuals of Cellario); previously it had only just occurred here and there; but the thought contained in it had been in the air for some time--that is to say, in the soul of everybody--eked out with other words, such as 'barbarous' or 'Gothic' ages, and Vasari expresses it by means of the distinction between ancient and 'old,' calling those things ancient which occurred before the existence of Constantine, of Corinth, of Athens, of Rome, and of other very famous cities built up to the time of Nero, of the Vespasians, of Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus, and 'old' those "which had their origin from St Silvester onward." In any case, the distinction was clear: on the one hand most brilliant light, on the other dense darkness. After Constantine, writes the same Vasari, "every sort of virtue" was lost, "beautiful" souls and "lofty" intellects became corrupted into "most ugly" and "basest," and the fervent zeal of the new religion did infinite damage to the arts. This means neither more nor less than that _dualism,_ one of the capital traits of the Middle Ages, was retained, although differently determined, for now the god was (although not openly acknowledged) antiquity, art, science, Greek and Roman life, and its adversary, the reprobate and rebel, was the Middle Age, 'Gothic' temples, theology and philosophy bristling with difficulties, the clumsy and cruel customs of that age. But just because the respective functions of the two terms were merely inverted, their opposition remained, and if Christianity did not succeed in understanding Paganism and in recognizing its father, so the Renaissance failed to recognize itself as the son of the Middle Ages, and did not understand the positive and durable value of the period that was closing. For this reason, both ages destroyed or allowed to disappear the monuments of the previous age. This was certainly far less the case with the Renaissance, which expressed itself less violently and was deeply imbued with the thought of the Middle Ages, and, owing to the idea of humanity, had an obscure feeling of the importance of its predecessor. So much was this the case that the school of learned men and philologists already mentioned was formed at that time, with the new of investigating medieval antiquities. But the learned are the learned--that is to say, they do not take an active