school (1510) at Saint Paul's, in London (R. 138), the first of a long
line of English humanistic grammar schools. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael,
and Michael Angelo were adding new fame to Italy, and carrying the
Renaissance movement over into that art which the world has ever since
treasured and admired.

The Italian cities, particularly Genoa and Venice, had become rich from
their commerce, as had many cities in northern lands. Everywhere the
cities were centers for the new life in western Christendom. England was
rapidly changing from an agricultural to a manufacturing nation. The serf
was evolving into a free man all over western Europe. Italian navigators
had discovered new sea routes and lands, and robbed the ocean of its
terrors. Columbus had discovered a new world, soon to be peopled and to
become the home of a new civilization. Magellan had shown that the world
was round and poised in space, instead of flat and surrounded by a
circumfluent ocean. The printing-press had been perfected and scattered
over Europe, and was rapidly multiplying books and creating a new desire
to read (R. 134). The Church was more tolerant of new ideas than it had
been in the past, or soon was to be for centuries to come. All of these
new influences and conditions combined to awaken thought as had not
happened before since the days of ancient Rome. The world seemed about
ready for rapid advances in many new directions, and great progress in
learning, education, government, art, commerce, and invention seemed
almost within grasp. Unfortunately the promise was not to be fulfilled,
and the progress that seemed possible in 1500 was soon lost amid the
bitterness and hatreds engendered by a great religious conflict, then
about to break, and which was destined to leave, for centuries to come, a
legacy of intolerance and suspicion in all lands.