CHAPTER VII 
THE MODERN ERA 
I N the matter of social progress, Italy had the bet 
ter of other European nations at the beginning 
of the modem period, both in the fact that she oc 
cupied one of the sites of early civilization, the pul 
sations of which had never quite died out, and in that 
she had a clear waterway to the Mohammedan 
countries at the eastern end of the Mediterranean, 
and her commercial relations with them inoculated 
her directly with their culture. And the ruins of 
ancient Greece, lying along the shore of this trade- 
route, did their part in reviving the ancient ideas 
and aspirations in the minds of modern man. Thus 
it happened that the new arts of printing and book 
making became the means of spreading the classical 
literature and learning among the Italians, while in 
the Bible, had a wider popularity, and served to 
communicate somewhat of the spirit of that earlier 
patriarchal period to the northern civilizations. 
But aside from this generalization, it was the more 
educated classes everywhere who took up the study 
and adopted the spirit of the classics, while the