tastes unhindered.  Rome early assumed novel airs of piety, and external conformity to austere patterns became the fashion here.  Yet the Papal capital did not wholly cease to be the resort of students and of artists.  The universities maintained themselves in a respectable position—–­ far different, indeed, from that which they had held in the last century, yet not ignoble.  Much was being learned on many lines of study divergent from those prescribed by earlier humanists.  Padua, in particular, distinguished itself for medical researches.  This was the flourishing time, moreover, of Academies, in which, notwithstanding nonsense talked and foolish tastes indulged, some solid work was done for literature and science.  The names of the Cimento, Delia Crusca, and Palazzo Vernio at Florence, remind us of not unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of language, and in the formation of a new dramatic style of music.  At the same time the resurgence of popular literature and the creation of popular theatrical types deserve to be particularly noticed.  It is as though the Italian nation at this epoch, suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open air, indulging in dialectical niceties and immortalizing street-jokes by the genius of masqued comedy.

This most ancient and intensely vital race had given Europe the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the system of Roman law, the Romance languages, Latin Christianity, the Papacy, and, lastly, all that is included in the art and culture of the Renaissance.  It was time, perhaps, that it should go to rest a century or so, and watch uprising nations—­the Spanish, English, French, and so forth—­stir their stalwart limbs in common strife and novel paths of pioneering industry.

After such fashion let us, then, if we can contrive to do so, regard the Italians during their subjection to the Church and Austria.  Were it not for these consolatory reflections, and for the present reappearance of the nation in a new and previously unapprehended form of unity, the history of the Counter-Reformation period would be almost too painful for investigation.  What the Italians actually accomplished during this period in art, learning, science, and literature, was indeed more than enough to have conferred undying luster on such races as the Dutch or Germans at the same epoch.  But it would be ridiculous to compare Italians with either Dutchmen or Germans at a time when Italy was still so incalculably superior.  Compared with their own standard, compared with what they might have achieved under more favorable conditions of national independence, the products of this age are saddening.  The tragic elements of my present theme are summed up in the fact that Italy during the Counter-Reformation was inferior to Italy during the Renaissance, and that this inferiority was due to the interruption of vital and organic processes by reactionary forces.