Italian art recognised their claim to stand beside Madonna and the Saints in the Pantheon of humane culture; but the painters re-made them in accordance with the modern spirit.

This slight touch of transformation proved that, though they were no longer objects of religious devotion, they still preserved a vital meaning for an altered age.

Having personified for the antique world qualities which, though suppressed and ignored by militant and mediaeval Christianity, were strictly human, the Hellenic deities still signified those qualities for modern Europe, now at length re-fortified by contact with the ancient mind.

For it is needful to remember that in all movements of the Renaissance we ever find a return in all sincerity and faith to the glory and gladness of nature, whether in the world without or in the soul of man.

To apprehend that glory and that gladness with the pure and primitive perceptions of the early mythopoets, was not given to the men of the new world.