The Development of Classical Learning.

It was naturally in Italy, who had never forgotten her relationship to ancient Rome, and where the knowledge of Latin literature had never altogether died out, that the revival first took place. It may be said to have been begun early in the twelfth century with the study of Roman law. But it was not until two centuries later that Petrarch revived the study of the Latin classics. The promised land, however, of Greek antiquity he was only permitted to see from Pisgah. He could only weep over the Homer he could not read. The first Greek student of Western Europe was Boccaccio, and he was never more than a student. But at the close of the fourteenth century a really competent teacher of Greek, Manuel Chrysoloras, found his way to Italy, and then the work began in earnest. The first half of the fifteenth century was the age of collecting manuscripts, so that it has been called after him who was the leader of the movement-the age of Poggio. The fall of Constantinople, which brought a fresh supply of exited Greeks to Italy, some laden with manuscripts. gave an additional stimulus to the work. The invention of printing brought with it the power not only of multiplying these precious manuscripts indefinitely, but of putting their contents beyond the reach of destruction.

At first the Italians were too bewildered by the boundless vista of antiquity which opened upon them to consider what was the special feature in it which attracted them. But gradually they found that what they cared for most in the ancient masterpieces was the perfection of their form. Henceforth they studied them for their form alone. Not for their matter. There were exceptions, of course, such as Laurentius Valla, Polilian, Pontanus, Marullus, Ficino, and his fellow Platonists, "amiable browsers in the Medicean park," as George Eliot calls them; but, on the whole, the great aim of Italian scholars was to emulate the form of the ancients to write elegant Latin and Greek." Ciceronianism, the clothing of trifles-often filthy trifles in the purest Latinity, was the final phase of Italian scholarship.-[The National Review.