HISTORIANS, having a predilection for exactness, are concerned to find dates not only for kings and queens and battles and treaties, but for those great changes in the manners and morals of mankind which begin unconsciously, are wrought out in silence, and present themselves to the historian as accomplished revolutions before he is at all aware that anything of moment is going on. A revolution of this kind was in progress throughout Christendom in the fifteenth century; and its results are so astonishing, so bewildering in their magnitude and in their infinite ramifications that we resort to figurative language and call the movement the Renaissance, the Revival of Learning. It is, indeed, a new birth, a new life, rather newer and altogether more astonishing than any mere return of the learning of the ancients could have been; but the leaven in the decaying mass of feudalism operated slowly, and did not come to full power until long after the period which must be a limit for this book; therefore, we can but note certain significant facts in the mighty process which was to transform the feudal lady of the chateau into the lady of the court and of the brilliant literary salon, to substitute a Catherine de Medicis, or a Marguerite de Navarre, or a Madame de La Fayette, for an Eleanor of Guienne, a Mahaut d'Artois, or a Christine de Pisan. As nearly as can be determined, the age of feudalism ends in the fifteenth century; but the soul of the old civilization leaves its body imperceptibly and enters into that of the new: it "melts, and makes no noise, As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say Now his breath goes, and some say no."