The names of the Cimento, Delia Crusca, and Palazzo Vernio at Florence, remind us of not unimportant labors in physics, in the analysis of language, and in the formation of a new dramatic style of music.

At the same time the resurgence of popular literature and the creation of popular theatrical types deserve to be particularly noticed.

It is as though the Italian nation at this epoch, suffocated by Spanish etiquette, and poisoned by Jesuitical hypocrisy, sought to expand healthy lungs in free spaces of open air, indulging in dialectical niceties and immortalizing street-jokes by the genius of masqued comedy.
This most ancient and intensely vital race had given Europe the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the system of Roman law, the Romance languages, Latin Christianity, the Papacy, and, lastly, all that is included in the art and culture of the Renaissance.

It was time, perhaps, that it should go to rest a century or so, and watch uprising nations--the Spanish, English, French, and so forth--stir their stalwart limbs in common strife and novel paths of pioneering industry.
After such fashion let us, then, if we can contrive to do so, regard the Italians during their subjection to the Church and Austria.

Were it not for these consolatory reflections, and for the present reappearance of the nation in a new and previously unapprehended form of unity, the history of the Counter-Reformation period would be almost too painful for investigation.