is no less pathetic to watch tide after tide of the ocean of humanity sweeping from all parts of Europe, to break in passionate but unavailing foam upon the shores of Palestine, whole nations laying life down for the chance of seeing the walls of Jerusalem, worshiping the sepulcher whence Christ had risen, loading their fleet with relics and with cargoes of the sacred earth, while all the time within their breasts and brains the spirit of the Lord was with them, living but unrecognized, the spirit of freedom which erelong was destined to restore its birthright to the world.

Meanwhile the middle age accomplished its own work.  Slowly and obscurely, amid stupidity and ignorance, were being forged the nations and the languages of Europe.  Italy, France, Spain, England, Germany took shape.  The actors of the future drama acquired their several characters, and formed the tongues whereby their personalities should be expressed.  The qualities which render modern society different from that of the ancient world, were being impressed upon these nations by Christianity, by the Church, by chivalry, by feudal customs.  Then came a further phase.  After the nations had been molded, their monarchies and dynasties were established.  Feudalism passed by slow degrees into various forms of more or less defined autocracy.  In Italy and Germany numerous principalities sprang into pre-eminence; and though the nation was not united under one head, the monarchical principle was acknowledged.  France and Spain submitted to a despotism, by right of which the king could say, ‘L’Etat c’est moi.’  England developed her complicated constitution of popular right and royal prerogative.  At the same time the Latin Church underwent a similar process of transformation.  The Papacy became more autocratic.  Like the king, the Pope began to say, ‘L’Eglise c’est moi.’  This merging of the mediaeval State and mediaeval Church in the personal supremacy of King and Pope may be termed the special feature of the last age of feudalism which preceded the Renaissance.  It was thus that the necessary conditions and external circumstances were prepared.  The organization of the five great nations, and the leveling of political and spiritual interests under political and spiritual despots, formed the prelude to that drama of liberty of which the Renaissance was the first act, the Reformation the second, the Revolution the third, and which we nations of the present are still evolving in the establishment of the democratic idea.

Meanwhile, it must not be imagined that the Renaissance burst suddenly upon the world in the fifteenth century without premonitory symptoms.  Far from that:  within the middle age itself, over and over again, the reason strove to break loose from its fetters.  Abelard, in the twelfth century, tried to prove that the interminable dispute about entities and words was founded on a misapprehension.  Roger Bacon, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, anticipated