up the culture of an age, move for the most part from different
starting-points, and by unconnected roads. As products of the
same generation they partake indeed of a common character, and
unconsciously illustrate each other; but of the producers
themselves, each group is solitary, gaining what advantage or
disadvantage there may be in intellectual isolation. Art and
poetry, philosophy and the religious life, and that other life of
refined pleasure and action in the conspicuous places of the
world, are each of them confined to its own circle of ideas, and
those who prosecute either of them are generally little [xiv]
curious of the thoughts of others. There come, however, from
time to time, eras of more favourable conditions, in which the
thoughts of men draw nearer together than is their wont, and the
many interests of the intellectual world combine in one complete
type of general culture. The fifteenth century in Italy is one of
these happier eras, and what is sometimes said of the age of
Pericles is true of that of Lorenzo:--it is an age productive in
personalities, many-sided, centralised, complete. Here, artists
and philosophers and those whom the action of the world has
elevated and made keen, do not live in isolation, but breathe a
common air, and catch light and heat from each other's thoughts.
There is a spirit of general elevation and enlightenment in which
all alike communicate. The unity of this spirit gives unity to all
the various products of the Renaissance; and it is to this intimate
alliance with the mind, this participation in the best thoughts
which that age produced, that the art of Italy in the fifteenth
century owes much of its grave dignity and influence.

I have added an essay on Winckelmann, as not incongruous with
the studies which precede it, because Winckelmann, coming in