First Sentence

"IN Italy, and in France on that side that lies hard by northern Italy, as well as in northern France, where she reaches to the flood of the Rhine, there began to dawn in the twelve hundreds a new meaning in life, a new revelation of the significance of life; and with the dawn was to be created what is somewhat foolishly called a re-birth, a Renaissance, of the arts-for the arts evolve, as all life evolves, and dead things are re-born never."