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Rh Filangieri, Genovesi, Galiani. Three of these distinguished men were Neapolitans, a circumstance significant alike of the lively genius of the people, and of the liberality of the government under Charles the Third and his enlightened minister Tanucci. The spirit of the Renaissance seemed to have returned in some measure; but the drift was not now to the classical art and the literature that had effected the spiritual emancipation of the former age, but to new theories of human rights and duties, and to the removal of restrictions from civic action and social intercourse. There probably never was a time since the age of Marcus Aurelius when philosophers attained nearer to royalty than in the age of Frederick and Catherine, and, were not vaster issues at stake than the improvement of human institutions, the same kind of regret might be felt at the French Revolution which some have expressed for the Reformation as a premature movement, destructive of safe and moderate reform.

In truth, however, the human spirit at both epochs needed regeneration; to have perpetuated the eighteenth-century type, admirable as this is in many respects, would have denoted consent to dwell in decencies for ever. (1738–94) and (175–287) were nevertheless great reformers, who, the former in his Dei Delitti e delle Pene (1763), the latter in his Scienza della Legislazione (1783), contributed greatly to overthrow mediæval notions of justice, and to infuse a humane spirit into legislation, not merely by the abolition of revolting and atrocious penalties, but by proposing the reformation of the criminal as a chief object of the lawgiver. This was the especial mission of Beccaria, who also introduced a very important