superior to the American Cavalier in social position as well as in character. Virginia may fairly be taken, in both of these respects, as the type of the Southern British colonies in general. They were all composed, for the most part, of similar social elements brought together under the influence of similar circumstances. Yet South Carolina, that other center of the southern aristocracy, where the Barnwells, the Rhetts, and the Yanceys, with their plebeian names, affect to be of superior race to the vulgar Yankees, deserves a brief mention apart.

Like Virginia, it was originally a proprietary colony, and the first settlers were sent over at the expense of the company. The land on which Charleston now stands was given away in order to encourage immigration. A few impoverished gentlemen, of the cavalier school, made their way thither to seek their fortunes; but the mass of the settlers were at once so low-bred and so turbulent that the aristocratic constitution prepared for them by Shaftesbury and Locke could never be enforced there. "Charleston," says Hildreth, "was a favorite resort of pirates, and an attempt by Ludwell [Governor in 1691] to bring a crew of them to justice, was very unpopular, and proved unsuccessful." The colony received large accessions of Dutch, Irish, and Scotch emigrants. Fortunately, all religions were tolerated in it; and it became a refuge for the persecuted Huguenots of France, from whom it derived its best blood. Now mark the number of nationalites:-Englishmen, Dutchmen, Irishmen, Scotchmen, Frenchmen-such is the mongrel origin of that State which in the Revolution swarmed with Tories, and in behalf of which the audacious claim has been set up across the water, by the abettors of its modern treason, that it comes of pure and gentle English blood.

Yet one might think that even in South Carolina the blood of revolutionary patriots was sufficiently common to satisfy a reasonable pride, without need of going further back and insulting history with spurious genealogies. Surely, Virginia can well afford to be content with whatever of ancestral glory she may derive from the age of Washington and Jefferson! What a contempt to the father of his country to boast that he

was remotely connected with some junior branch of a noble family of England! There is a sensible remark of Hawthorne's, applicable to North and South alike, that "individuals among us must be singularly unfortunate if, mixing as we do, they inherit no drop of gentle blood." On the other hand, who can say that there was not one servant, or pauper, or scapegrace among his ancestors? Upon the whole, a wise people would elect their own progenitors, not from the two extremes of English society, licentious as both were, under the reigns of the Stuarts and later, but rather from the sober middle ranks, the hardy and intelligent and virtuous yeomanry, from whom, more largely than from any other class, our blood was actually derived.

ARTICLE V.-THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS IN THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES.

PART I.-TO THE MIDDLE OF CENTURY XV.

It is our purpose in the following essay to give a sketch of the age of the revival of letters, or, as it is more definitely named, the age of humanism, deriving this name from the literæ humanæ or humaniores, the study and results of which characterize the period more than all other influences put together. Under the broader term renascimento, or renaissance, can be included all the causes which gave a new spirit and direction to thinking in Europe at the close of the middle age, as well the influences peculiar to humanism, as those which emanated from other sources, such as new discoveries, new inventions, the modern languages, new art, new principles of government, and the like. But into this wider field we shall not attempt to enter, or, at most, shall make our surveys of it brief and comprehensive. Professor Jacob Burkhardt, in his work entitled "die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien," (Basel, 1860), has rendered a service to philosophical history by his sketches of this period of "revival," but so great is the multitude of particulars relating to the life and thought of any age, that they overwhelm us by their number, and prevent definiteness of impression. We prefer, therefore, to confine ourselves to the single historical cause of humanism, as the most mighty among the agencies which lifted the world off its hinges, giving it a new position, and, at the same time, threatening it with ruin. In our task, we shall follow, to some extent, in the steps of Professor George Voigt, formerly of Munich, and then of Königsberg, who, in his "Widerbelebung des classischen Aterthums, oder das erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus," surveys the first century of this period, and in a more recent and much larger work on the life of Pope Pius II. exhibits to us a leading representative of its spirit.

The age of humanism can be divided with advantage, as

Mr. Voigt has perceived, into two parts. The end of the first will coincide nearly enough with the middle of the fifteenth century, or with the death of that great patron of letters, Pope Nicholas V., in 1455. Just about this time, Constantinople fell and printing was discovered. These influences, among others, usher in the second division of the period, which is characterized also by the revived study of philosophy, by the wider spread of classical learning beyond the Alps, and by more clear tendencies towards serious innovations, affecting the interests of religion and of society.

At present, we intend to carry our history of the humanistic age to the end of the first period, hoping at some future time, if God shall grant us life and health, to complete the

survey.

In commencing such an inquiry, one is disposed to ask why a new cause like the revised study of antiquity was necessary, in order to introduce a new age of refinement. Were there not resources enough in Christianity working upon the materials on hand, upon the stores of Germanic and mediæval legends, and upon those Roman writers who had kept their ground through all the centuries, without calling old manuscripts from their lurking places in monasteries, and importing Greeks and Greek authors from Constantinople? As the classical age of Athenian literature worked over the stories of the epic cycle, why could not a new age be ushered in by presenting in more beautiful forms the cycles of Charlemagne, and prince Arthur, and the holy Grail? Why could not such a profound poem as the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach be the starting point of a new refinement, as readily as Ovid's metamorphoses, or Claudian? Or, why, if Dante composed his immortal poem with the knowledge of only a few Latin poets, could not an age of taste and polish shortly after him be inaugurated with no more remains of antiquity? When the modern period had been fully ushered in, the poets returned to the stories of the middle ages, to those fields of imagination on which no winds from Greece and Rome had breathed; Ariosto, Berni, Boiardo, Spencer, and others reveled in romance; what need, then, for an age to intervene, which caught its in

spiration from classical models, and despised the writings and the legends of the fathers?

In attempting to respond to inquiries of this nature, we find it impossible to deny, that a culture and progress almost wholly indigenous might have arisen in Europe. Suppose all remains of heathen learning to have been irrevocably, lost, Christianity was a spring of rejuvenation and improvement; the materials within its reach were as capable of being moulded into the forms of literature as into those of art,—where, in fact, they exercised a control over the minds of artists; and just as painting and the Gothic style of building needed no choice remains of Greek art to copy after, so the other forms, in which beauty and the sublime express themselves, might have had an independent domestic source. But we can say thus much, that there were great deficiences in mediæval culture which it could not, or could not except by a slow process, repair from its own unaided resources. And we may, perhaps, perceive the wisdom of Divine Providence in opening and quickening the modern age by the help of an extinct civilization.

First, it was of great importance that a connection should be restored between the older and the newer time. The knowledge of this connection had, in great measure, perished amid the ignorance and limited views of the centuries, through which the history of Greece and Rome lay buried and forgotten. The Scriptures, indeed, ran back in their records to the beginning of the world, and disclosed the main thread of God's world-plan, but they could not be fully understood, they could not shine with all their light, they could not chase away error and vague impression concerning the past, without a history of that past reaching beyond the events that befel God's chosen people. So, also, the enlargement of knowledge, by means of the crusades, was good as far as it went; the minds of men grew with their conceptions of the vastness of the world, and their comprehension of the forms of human society; while commerce, by sending westward the arts of the east, by awakening desire and thus stimulating production, and by a gathering of knowledge from various quarters, did