It attacked every province of knowledge, and in a few years it transformed all.

Experimental science, the science of philology, the science of politics, the critical investigation of religious truth, all took their origin from this Renascence--this "New Birth" of the world.

Art, if it lost much in purity and propriety, gained in scope and in the fearlessness of its love of Nature.

Literature, if crushed for the moment by the overpowering attraction of the great models of Greece and Rome, revived with a grandeur of form, a large spirit of humanity, such as it has never known since their day.

In England the influence of the new movement extended far beyond the little group in which it had a few years before seemed concentrated.