Great artists went westward often to execute masterpieces for the most appreciative and powerful patrons in the age of Leo, as before in the times of Augustus and Pericles, but progress in refinement called them eastward never. When the arts were in their highest vigor in Italy, they were wooed to the banks of the Seine and the Thames, by that true lover, Francis I., of France, and by the monied might of England. The richest art treasures on earth have ever since accumulated in the retreats where choice collections then were first commenced, as we shall have occasion more fully to state when we come to sketch the age now transpiring. For ten centuries the vast and progressive populace of continental Europe had no other representative than the Church; it was then that Art achieved its greatness under the fostering care of Catholicism, when the Church belonged to the People, and they were comparatively free. But when Religion sank into bigotry, and Art, instead of addressing the popular heart, was compelled to minister to the narrow demands of private patrons, she passed beyond seas, and awaited fairer auspices in the midst of a freer race. CHAPTER III. SCIENCE. Exactly at the era when the great European race was dismembered, the Latin tongue was disused. This had formerly been the universal tie between dissimilar tribes, and when it was sundered by such men as Dantè, who rose to stamp the seal of their genius upon the idiom of the common people, science soared sublimely amid the new growth of national languages, and became the supreme and most universally uniting bond. When Italy had gradually become nationalized as one Italy, Spain as one Spain, Germany as one Germany, France as one France, and Britain as one Great Britain; and when that still mightier process of civilization, the Reformation, had supervened, ecclesiastical union was destroyed, and then it was that enlarged invention came to the rescue and supplied the conservative influence which was most in demand. Increased ardor in the pursuit of knowledge led to wider and more frequent intercommunications, both mental and physical, while these in turn were encouraged and protected by the improved polity of aspiring states. A new voice even more cosmopolitic than cotemporaneous creeds broke upon the roused and exulting peoples saying, "One is your master, Thought, and all ye are brethren!" Sciences lead most directly, and with greatest efficiency to general views; and, above all, natural law, that science which treats of inherent and universal rights, arose and was cultivated with propitious zeal. The dawn was begun, and the noon was not far off when in central Europe a great proficient in universal history could say: "The barriers are broken, which severed states and nations in hostile egotism. One cosmopolitic bond unites at present all thinking minds, and all the light of this century may now freely fall upon a new Galileo or Erasmus."