In common with the rest of Europe, and in consequence of an inevitable alteration of their mental bias, they had lost the blithe spontaneity of the Renaissance.

But they were at the same time suffering from grievous exhaustion, humiliated by the tyranny of foreign despotism, and terrorized by ecclesiastical intolerance.

In their case, therefore, a sort of moral and intellectual atrophy becomes gradually more and more perceptible.

The clear artistic sense of rightness and of beauty yields to doubtful taste.

The frank audacity of the Renaissance is superseded by cringing timidity, lumbering dulness, somnolent and stagnant acquiescence in accepted formulae.