During that period of prodigious activity the entire nation seemed to be endowed with an instinct for the beautiful, and with the capacity for producing it in every conceivable form.

As we travel through Italy at the present day, when "time, war, pillage, and purchase" have done their worst to denude the country of its treasures, we still marvel at the incomparable and countless beauties stored in every burgh and hamlet.

Pacing the picture galleries of Northern Europe, the country seats of English nobles, and the palaces of Spain, the same reflection is still forced upon us: how could Italy have done what she achieved within so short a space of time?
What must the houses and the churches once have been, from which these spoils were taken, but which still remain so rich in masterpieces?
Psychologically to explain this universal capacity for the fine arts in the nation at this epoch, is perhaps impossible.

Yet the fact remains, that he who would comprehend the Italians of the Renaissance must study their art, and cling fast to that Ariadne-thread throughout the labyrinthine windings of national character.

He must learn to recognise that herein lay the sources of their intellectual strength as well as the secret of their intellectual weakness.
It lies beyond the scope of this work to embrace in one inquiry the different forms of art in Italy, or to analyse the connection of the aesthetic instinct with the manifold manifestations of the Renaissance.
Even the narrower task to which I must confine myself, is too vast for the limits I am forced to impose upon its treatment.