Excerpt from Last and First: Being Two Essays; The New Spirit, And, Arthur Hugh Clough During the last thirty years rapid advance has been made toward a true knowledge of the Renaissance. A group of eminent writers in France, Germany, England, and Italy, have devoted their best energies to investigating its origins in the Middle Ages, explaining the conditions of its development, and analysing its specific character. Yet I feel that we are still very far from being able to give a plaus ible theory of the causes which produced this reawakening of the human mind, or to define with absolute precision what was its vital essence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.