At all points the development of the Italians strikes us as precocious, with the weakness of precocity scarcely distinguishable from the decay of old age.

A transition from the point attained in the Renaissance to some firmer and more solid ground was imperatively demanded.

But the fatality of events precluded the Italians from making it.

Their evolution, checked in mid career by the brilliant ambition of France and the cautious reactionary despotism of Spain, remained suspended.

Students are left, face to face with the sixteenth century, to decipher an inscription that lacks its leading verb, to puzzle over a riddle whereof the solution is hidden from us by the ruin of a people.