Quitting this sphere of speculation, we may next point out that the European system had undergone an incalculable process of transformation.  Powerful nationalities were in existence, who, having received their education from Italy, were now beginning to think and express thought with marked originality.  The Italians stood no longer in a relation of uncontested intellectual superiority to these peoples, while they met them under decided disadvantages at all points of political efficiency.  The Mediterranean had ceased to be the high road of commercial enterprise and naval energy.  Charles V.’s famous device of the two columns, with its motto Plus Ultra, indicated that illimitable horizons had been opened, that an age had begun in which Spain, England and Holland should dispute the sovereignty of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  Italy was left, with diminished forces of resistance, to bear the brunt of Turk and Arab depredations.  The point of gravity in the civilized world had shifted.  The Occidental nations looked no longer toward the South of Europe.

While these various causes were in operation, Catholic Christianity showed signs of re-wakening.  The Reformation called forth a new and sincere spirit in the Latin Church; new antagonisms were evoked, and new efforts after self-preservation had to be made by the Papal hierarchy.  The center of the world-wide movement which is termed the Counter-Reformation was naturally Rome.  Events had brought the Holy See once more into a position of prominence.  It was more powerful as an Italian State now, through the support of Spain and the extinction of national independence, than at any previous period of history.  In Catholic Christendom its prestige was immensely augmented by the Council of Trent.  At the same epoch, the foreigners who dominated Italy, threw themselves with the enthusiasm of fanaticism into this Revival.  Spain furnished Rome with the militia of the Jesuits and with the engines of the Inquisition.  The Papacy was thus able to secure successes in Italy which were elsewhere only partially achieved.  It followed that the moral, social, political and intellectual activities of the Italians at this period were controlled and colored by influences hostile to the earlier Renaissance.  Italy underwent a metamorphosis, prescribed by the Papacy and enforced by Spanish rule.  In the process of this transformation the people submitted to rigid ecclesiastical discipline, and adopted, without assimilating, the customs of a foreign troop of despots.

At first sight we may wonder that the race which had shone with such incomparable luster from Dante to Ariosto, and which had done so much to create modern culture for Europe, should so quietly have accepted a retrogressive revolution.  Yet, when we look closer, this is not surprising.  The Italians were fatigued with creation, bewildered by the complexity of their discoveries, uncertain as to the immediate course before them.  The Renaissance had been