church of Jacques-la-Boucherie; he left at the library, the catalogue of which contains but twentysame time, to William L'Exale, the churchwarden six items, and only accounts for some forty of the said church, the sum of forty sous to pay volumes; and when, as there is every reason to the expense of having a cage made, in which the infer, some of the royal libraries of the succeeding breviary might be kept, to prevent its appropriation two centuries, at least in England, scarcely or in plainer words, its theft-by any of the amounted to half the number. readers whom it might attract. It may, however, fairly be argued that, if Roger Robertson, in proof of the assertion that the Bacon gave so large a sum as is stated for books, middle ages were ages of great intellectual dark- their value must have consisted as well in the subness, says "The price of books became so high ject treated as in the cost of the materials of which that persons of moderate fortune could not afford they were composed. It shows, at least, that, if to purchase them. The Countess of Anjou paid the age in general was dark, there must have been for a copy of the Homilies of Haimon, Bishop of a few either prizing, for their own acquisition, Halberstadt, two hundred sheep, five quarters of works of rare knowledge, or aware of the value set wheat, and the same quantity of rye and millet;" upon them by others; for the venders, whoever and he quotes as his authority the "Histoire Lit- they might be, if not conversant with the subjecteraire de France, par les Religieux Benedictins." matter of their merchandise themselves, could not He adds also, on the authority of Gabriel Naudé, possibly have been ignorant of the estimation in in his "Addit. a l'Histoire de Louys XI., par which it was held by those who were and it is Comines"-"Even so late as the year 1471, when difficult to suppose that these same volumes, acLouis XI. borrowed the works of Rasis, the quired at so great a price by the munificent friar, Arabian physician, from the Faculty of Medicine had no other value than in the beauty of their in Paris, he not only deposited as a pledge a con-adorning, or the artistical skill of their composition siderable quantity of plate, but was obliged to pro-and decoration. If a conjecture may be hazarded cure a nobleman to join with him as surety in a by persons so unlearned as ourselves, it is more deed, binding himself under a great forfeiture, to than probable that they were the rare treatises restore it." With both these statements Mr. from which he drew the secrets of ancient Greek Maitland, in his "Essays on the Dark Ages," is philosophy, or the more modern manuscripts of very angry he seeks to invalidate the credit of eastern sages from which he derived his knowledge the inference which the historian would derive of the occult science of Arabia. Much of that for from the first by some unworthy quibbles as to his which he has the credit of discovery, though untranslation of the French word muid, the Latin of known to his own age, seems to have been familiar which, in a monk's letter, is modius, and which to the philosophers of old; and, whilst the merit Mr. Maitland would translate bushel, instead of five and wonder of his learning and sagacity be not the quarters. He also wonders at the omission by the less, the darkness of the age in which he lived behistorian of an item in the price paid-of "a cer- comes more apparent; as it is found that what he tain number of marten skins." These criticisms introduced, and which was then accounted by so do not touch the fact that a great price was paid many to be the result of magical art, was not so for a certain volume of homilies, however much much the discovery of what had never been known they may show the learning of the critic. He is as the revival of knowledge lost. Many of the also little content with the second instance quoted principles upon which his inventions were founded, by Robertson, and thinks that the value of the in- especially those of optics, seem to have been known ference which he would likewise draw from it is to Euclid, Archimedes, Proclus, and Ptolemy. destroyed by a similar fact of modern times-viz., Alhazen, an Arabian author, wrote a treatise, about that when Selden wished to borrow a manuscript the year 1100, in which he gave the first distinct from the Bodleian Library he was required to give account of the magnifying powers of glasses or a bond for a thousand pounds. Mr. Maitland's crystals; and, though Bacon carried his improvefact, however, fails in the use he would make of it, ments farther, in the matter of spectacles, than any and fully bears out the supposition that the exces- who had preceded him, it is not unfair to suppose sive surety required, in both instances, was a proof that the knowledge of the principles which led him of the value of the book; whilst all the concomi- to the invention was contained in some of the rare tant circumstances attending the surety required treatises which had cost him so much. With from the French king show that it was not, as in reference to the greatest invention of which he has the case of Selden, an illustration of the rarity of a the credit-viz., that of gunpowder-Sir Francis, particular book, but of the rarity of books in gen- in his dedication, says "Hindostan seems to have produced the invention of nitrate powder; but Whether this scarcity of books, or the high it remains to be ascertained to which of the races value that was put upon them, be a proof of gene- who have peopled her soil the discovery belongs. ral ignorance, to the extent that Robertson asserts, Thence it was acquired, either primarily or deis another matter; still it does not alter the fact, as rivatively, by the Chinese, the Tartar, the Arab, Mr. Maitland endeavors to show, that this value in and the Greek, all distinguished either by mental books depended rather on the manner of their com-acuteness or warlike spirit, or by both these qualiposition than in the nature of the subject which ties." He adds-" And if any one of these nathey treated he thinks, and with justice, that the elements of this estimation are partly to be looked for in the costliness of the illumination and the nature of the binding-the latter being mostly composed" of plates of gold, silver, or carved ivory, adorned with gems, and even enriched with relics." Nevertheless, books must have been scarce, when, we find, upon the showing of the learned writer himself, that the Abbot Bonus, in the beginning of the eleventh century, spent a life in acquiring a tions had been permitted by Providence to use the simple process of converting the powder into the grain, the people so acquiring the knowledge would have obtained exactly the same predominance in the middle ages which the modern European now exercises over the rest of mankind." Sir Francis imagines a humorous incident (p. 190) to show that Bacon probably derived his invention from his observations on the nature of the "Greek fire" then in existence, to which there is such constant allusion in all the histories of ancient warfare, from the hardy enterprises of the Macedonian Alexander, down to the stern conflict of Saracen and Crusader, and the fierce struggles of the Venetian and Genoese republics. What was the exact nature of this "Greek fire" seems now hardly known; its effects were however very terrible. Of its use by the Turks against the Crusaders, under St. Louis, Jonville, the French historian, who was present, thus speaks" It was thrown from a machine called a petrary, and came forward as large as a barrel of verjuice, with a tail of fire issuing from it as big as a great sword, making a noise in its passage similar to thunder, and seeming like a dragon flying through the air; and, from the great quantity of fire issuing from it, giving such light in the army that one might see as if it had been day." Gaultier de Cariel, a valiant knight, was so terrified that he gave it as his opinion, and it was no bad one, that "as often as it was thrown the soldiers ought to prostrate themselves and beseech the Lord to deliver them from that danger against which he alone could protect them." Jonville adds that "Louis, being in bed in his tent, as often as he was informed that the Greek fire had been thrown, would raise himself up and exclaim, Good Lord God, preserve my people." This fire was thrown three times in the night from a petrary and four times in the day from a large cross-bow. Geoffrey de Vinesauf, who accompanied Richard Coeur de Lion in his crusade to the Holy Land, speaking of this fire says "With a pernicious stench and livid flame it consumed even flint and iron, nor could it be extinguished by water; but by sprinkling sand its violence might be abated, and vinegar would put the fire out." Father Daniel tells us that this fire was not only used in sieges but in battles. According to this author, Philip Augustus, king of France, having found a quantity of wild-fire ready prepared at Acre, brought it with him to France, and used it at the siege of Dieppe in burning the English vessels then in harbor. There is nothing new it seems under the sun; and, if we are to believe the same worthy authority, modern "infernals" cannot claim for their constructors much novelty of invention, since there seems to have been the same amount of mischievous ingenuity amongst our ancestors. He says, that "there was an engineer named Gaubet, a native of France, who found out the secret of preserving, even under water, a kind of artificial fire enclosed in earthen pots without any openings. He was so excellent a diver as to be able to pass under a river of this secret he availed himself so far as to succeed in setting fire to some thick palisades that stopped up the entrance to the Isle of Andely, which Philip was then besieging. At the time the enemy made an attack on the bridge which that prince had built over the Seine, and when all the attention of the besieged was directed that way, Gaubet dived with his pots under the palisades and set fire to them. Boats having been prepared for the soldiers, the isle was surprised on that side and the garrison of the castle compelled to capitulate." We do not vouch for the truth of this: we can only say that, if it be true, it beats all that French and American engineers have threatened to do, but, as far as we know, have never done. It is a pity for himself that Gaubet is not alive he and his pots would have been a capital catch for the Adelaide or the Polytechnic. To return, however, to our book. The author has given us some of the truths held by men in the middle ages, but scarcely any of the fictions, of which, it would seem, there were not a few; and yet we would humbly suggest that, without a knowledge of these, it is impossible to form a fair estimate of the actual condition of these times; for it must not be forgotten that, whilst the truth is the secret treasure of the few, the fiction is the common inheritance of the many. Whatever is valuable in institutions or in systems is not, after all, so much the characteristic or the exclusive possession of any one particular age; but is generally the result of the cumulative wisdom of all, the necessities or better perception of each successive generation retaining that which experience has tested, abstracting that which may have become pernicious or obsolete, and adding that which any fresh and nascent condition coevally brings to birth. Great men, far beyond their fellows, there have. ever been and always will be; and it would seem that upon these properly devolves the work of removing what may have become effete, or of bringing forth such fresh elements as may be needed. The result of their labor is the characteristic truth which has distinguished every age as indicative both of its necessity and progress. These men must, in a sense, express the mind of their generation; and, though oftentimes at an immeasurable distance, betray that which they have in common with the most ignorant of the day in which they live. Whoever will trace the progress of civilization through the calendar of time, with reference to man's character and deeds, will be able surely to ascertain the processes of this cumulative wisdom, and mark where halts have been made and increasing impetus received in its onward course. It is of the blessing of this wisdom that we are now reaping. What of liberty we enjoy in the state-what of light we have in the church-what of comfort and refinement we experience in the intercourse of social life, is owing, not to any sudden act, outbreak, instantaneous illumination, or unprepared discovery of any one class, or age, or man; but to the legitimate results which the necessities of an altered condition generated-the slow but steady growth of ordained principles to their true developments-and the natural issue of increasing knowledge. The truth is God's; something of it there has ever been with man, for he always, in his mercy, has been near to him. As long as he shall preserve his ambassadors upon earth with their ministry of reconciliation, that truth must manifest itself; and, in proportion as faith finds a place in the spirit of statesmen, priests, or princes, so will all national acts, and all forms of public teaching preserve the golden impress of this most precious of all moral treasures. No man, therefore, can lay his hand upon the institutions of any age and say, "There is no truth here." We know that, as the spirit of life successively tore aside the cumbrous coverings which the cruel care of her nursing by dark ignorance had thrown around her, to the hindrance of all healthful breathing and vigorous action, so her growing vigor became discernible in the successive impartations of truth and light to the greater institutions of Christendom. It is not then to the successive cycles or periods of British history, in isolation from each other, that we must look for that which we possess in the form of state verities or civil privileges-it is not to the struggle of the rude Briton with the polished Roman-of the English churl with his Saxon master-the Saxon serf with his Norman conqueror-nor to the fierce contention | feel upon the subject we cannot do better than quote of the lawless baron with his grasping monarch-from the book before us one of the many beautiful it is not to the strife for privilege which has so reflections with which it abounds, wherein the often existed between the church and the state, the author, though in other forms, enunciates the princommons and the throne-it is not to these alone ciples which we have ventured to suggest. in separateness-it is not to any one of these that "But is there any reason to wonder if the devices we must look for the blessings we enjoy. They of the mortal man, the shadows of a shade, are seen must rather be traced to whatever elements of to waste and wane away? Should we sorrow berighteousness there were in any one of these con- cause the stability of the everlasting bills is denied tentions, and they come of the silent but sure con- to the fabric raised upon dust and ashes? Must we solidation of such elements into systems. There is not confess the truth, and submit, without repining, no element of righteousness which does not, in due to the wisdom of the dispensation which decrees time, bear its fruit. Wherever it is found it comes that when human institutions have once arrived at from God, and whatever flows from, or is given by their fatal term they can never be revived? During him, has, inherent in it, as the very law of its being, the convulsions which alter the level of society, new the life-like property of fecundity. Men see not, opinions have been adopted, new habits have been it may be, in the wild and prolific abundance of assumed. Young spirits have risen, confident in natural vegetation, how or when the seed is drop- their own untaught conceit; whilst ranks of conped into the ground: they dream not, whilst it is tending champions have sunk into the grave. hidden, of that which it shall one day be. A bird Diversified as the human countenance is, by feature of the air may carry all unheeded the source of and expression, the human mind is still more varied future life to a distant spot; and, where there was by temper, education, rank, position, and intellect. barrenness before, beauty and verdure may spring Providence works by eliciting modes of thought, forth, though by processes all abstract from the ken not cyclical but successive; and in which man freely of man. So it is with the constitution of the land; acts, though without the power of controlling their the Briton, the Roman, the Saxon, and the Nor- evolution. No era which has once gone by can man, have each contributed somewhat to its forma- ever be brought back: individuals are never reprotion. The rude struggle for freedom left its im-duced: the creatures not merely of the last year, press the better civilization of the capital of the or even of the yesterday, will never more be found world was not without its ameliorating influence: together. Never will the same combinations recur, with the sea kings and their tribes came in the so long as the world endures." spirit of enterprise and the elements of inquiry; "The fitness of the forms possessed by the extinwhilst the mailed conquerors of the country some-guished policy is utterly lost: and the same integwhat redeemed the wrongs occasioned, by their rity which resisted the removal of the old landrapacity in the amenities of chivalry which they introduced, and the greater ecclesiastical knowledge and learning which they brought with them. Though what of right each contributed might for a time have been hidden from sight in the rank Now, this is the sound and truthful dealing with masses of coeval corruptions, yet the clearing pro- the present and the past, so far as moral reflection cesses of advancing civilization, whilst they re- is concerned, that we need; for the morbid spirit of moved that which was less pure, laid bare and gave the times has well nigh, on the one hand, emascuhealthful life to that which was essentially good.lated all wise and vigorous thinking on that which The seeds of truth are ever sown by the merciful care and providence of God, and no matter by what hand he sows them, they must spring forth and be fruitful in blessing to some one or other of his creatures; and we are now reaping the result of every right principle for which our ancestors, according to their light, or in any measure, contended. The graphic sketches which Sir Francis gives of an election, the transactions of the Guildhall and the session of the king in Parliament, lead his readers easily and naturally to entertain the just reflections which he makes on the constitution, political and civil, of the country; whilst the great truth is ever presented to our minds, that man, in all the changing and varied forms of his social existence, has been essentially the same. Though between the costume of one age and the guise of another there may be enough of distinction to show of what different aspects he is capable, there is still sufficient of that which is common to all to establish a common brotherhood between the men of climes and epochs far removed from each other. Whilst it shows the folly of the unthinking, therefore, to despise any phase through which man in his social existence has passed, it betrays, on the other hand, a want of intelligence as to that for which he is fitted and destined to assume the aspect of a byegone time, as being more suited to our condition than that which we have. To enforce what we marks will, as consistently, refuse to disturb the new, within whose boundaries other rights of property have been acquired. Blessed is the protecting hand!" has gone, down to the puerilities of a childish mind; and, on the other, the antagonistic rashness of the age passes by, in its mad haste, whatever of dignity or truth are to be found in that which preceded us. The one is an abuse of the imaginative facultythe other is a contempt of the meditative powers: in every well regulated mind each should have its place, for they are each an attribute of the immortal spirit, by which she recalls the past for wisdom and anticipates the future for strength and consolation; but all becomes confusion and disorder when either is unduly fostered to the prejudice and weakening of the other. We could have wished, however, as we have before said, to have found somewhat more of the fictions of the middle ages. Much is learnt by contrast. It is oftentimes by the deformity of the lie that the beauty of the truth is made manifest; and the quaint absurdities and monstrous forms of fiction serve to show by what paths and what distance reality has been departed from. It is difficult to suppose a tradition which is not founded on some fact; nevertheless, the forms which popular traditions assume show, in the disfiguring of that fact, how unsafe a vehicle it is for its transmission to society in its positive verity. Say what men will, where these fictions abound proof is given of a dark condition of society; for if there be on the one hand some above their fellows who know the error, there must be on the other a total absence of means by which it may be pointed out, or an absolute want of capacity to receive the explanation; and in this, after all, lies a sturdy obstacle in the way of those, who, in opposition to all that has hitherto been written on the subject, would fain persuade us that the centuries from the seventh to the thirteenth were not dark. "Motives infinitely more valuable than those of mere money or money's worth were engrafted upon the system of apprenticeship, so long as its spirit was properly observed. The admission into the guild, after the period of probation had concluded, was an attestation that, during the period of life when the human character is most susceptible of the influence of habit and example, the future citizen had conducted himself with a due attention to diligence and morality. Gratitude towards a kind master-emulation excited by an able one—the necessity of conciliating a harsh superior-affection towards an infirm or needy parent-the wish to be married, to form that union which the church so emphatically calls a holy state,' and upon which the happiness of the individual, and through the individual the happiness of the state, so mainly depends all these rendered the guild an unceasing source of moral renovation to the commonwealth." It was the kindly heart, rather than the fertile Customs and costumes are able expounders of the social condition of any nation: the legends of popular faith and the fictions of vulgar tradition, of its moral estate. It is by what men do believe, rather than by what they do not, that we find out where they stand in the scale of mental civilization; and we apprehend that, whilst the characteristic of the middle ages was faith, it was a faith in much that was positively false, rather than in that which was positively true; and this to such an extent that the amount of error far exceeded that of truth; nor should we be able to comprehend all the moral phenomena of those periods, many of which were certainly most beautiful and good, if we did not our-mind, that originated such systems as these; and selves believe that it is in the heart, more than in the mind, that God is both apprehended and manifested; and that, apart from what the corruption of man has made them, there is a safeguard for him in the mutual sympathy, better aspirations, and deep yearning after the really excellent in all human affections, as they have been implanted by God. These have ever preserved and do still preserve men, through the overruling mercy of a heavenly Father, in the midst of the darkest times, from the deep abyss into which ignorance would thrust them. We do not forget the light which the church has been commissioned to bear in the midst of the world; nor will we deny that, in the times of her greatest faithlessness, she has still been compelled, in some one form or another, to hold it forth: nevertheless, it is rather to the goodness of God in maintaining that light in, it may be, illegitimate ways, than to any legitimate result of her own in-ed with the associations of kindly feeling and warm, fluence, rightly directed in the feudal times, that Christendom has emerged, such as she is, from her mad follies of mimes, mysteries, and mummings. though the medal had its reverse, as Sir Francis acknowledges, yet it was one worthy to be borne on the breast of a nation ever distinguished for its open hand and stout courage. If the political economies of these modern times could allow of such a thing as the existence of hearts in the masses of humanity with which they deal, we question whether they would so often fail; but the curse of the day is a mechanical intellect-gigantic if you will—which never thinks its work is effectively done until the finer fibres of the human heart-the sensitive nerves, which expand at the warm handling of affection, as they shrink from the rough usage of the unfeeling—are all beaten out and flattened into one inert, senseless mass, ready for any other impression it may desire to give it. Whatever is beautiful in those visions of the past which the mind will sometimes call into being, invariably stands connect though rude, affection. Nor is this because the fancy would have it so, but because the memory, familiar with the history of the past, naturally leads The mental condition of the middle classes of the thought, though in a creative mood, instinctivethese ages did not stand high, but the heart was ly to take the forms with which it is most familiar. sound: there were tokens of its existence not to be Knighthood and chivalry, yeoman courage and city mistaken, in the healthful beatings of honest affec- independence, come before us, it is true, with astion and social union, in many an institution from pects of much ignorance, but with much bearing of which the ancient spirit is now gone, or of whose honest truth and social love; and if the schoolmasforms the head has taken possession to the dispos-ter be wanting in the group, whilst we miss, it may session of the heart, with about as much propriety, be, the impress of his fluent knowledge, we are not too, as he should manifest, who, hard and crabbed, wearied with the dull monotony of his inane pedanlean and angular in his shape, should take a vain tries. conceit to figure in the fitting garments of youthful, supple, and graceful beauty. Sir Francis, speaking of the ancient system of city apprenticeship, says "So long as the engagement subsisted according to its pristine spirit, it rendered the master and the servant members of one household and family; the parties were united by the mutual obligation of protection and obedience; the mutual connection recognized better elements than those of mere profit and gain. He would be an unwise legislator for his fellow-men, who would omit to take self-interest into consideration as a most powerful impelling motive; but a sorry one is he who relies upon selfinterest as affording any kind of security for diligence or industry, or for any quality to which the name of virtue can be ascribed. Whatever the political economist may urge to the contrary, unless men begin by bettering themselves, all his assumed receipts for bettering their condition are in vain. We neither despise intellect nor knowledge-far from it; we are not so overstocked with either that we could afford to do so were we willing; but they have, in the composition of man's nature and the relations of life, their proper sphere and limits; and when they take the place of kindly affections, and seek to fill up that for which, in the intercourse of man with man, the heart alone was destined, we think (perhaps we speak a rank heresy against the creed of the times) they are to be mourned over as the sad abuses of God's good gifts, rather than rejoiced in as great blessings. After all, you never will and never can have any system of government or of teaching, by which men are to be ruled or bettered in their condition, that will answer to the end proposed, which does not, in some sort, take some of its forms from the simple suggestions of the human heart-which does not reckon that hearts as well as minds are to be dealt with-which does not address itself in the language of experience to some one of the many facile entrances which the the notary, that he might say of them what he liked, and to affix the sign of the cross, in token of their faith, instead of writing"-the first is rather far-fetched, and the second will scarcely stand. Doubtless, the sign of the cross affixed was a symbol of faith and a confirmation of the act; but it stood exactly where political jurisprudence has accounted a personal signature to be a better evidence of identity, as it most certainly is. It may have been affixed, as Mr. Maitland observes, by those who could write; but we apprehend, in that case, the signature would sometimes have been seen. At any rate, if the question is to be settled by probabilities, we think, as we have already said, that the probabilities are in favor of Robertson's assertion, rather than of the learned critic's attempted refutation. If the nobility of that day could have written, it is singular that there is no evidence in proof of it. Sir Francis Palgrave says "So few persons amongst the laity, with the exception perhaps of the mercantile classes and the legists, were acquainted with the alphabet, that reading and writing acquired the name of 'clergy.' The term clerk' became equivalent to penman.' Our common nomenclature still bears testimony to the lack learning of ancient times." (16.) Concerning the dark ages much has been written pro and con. Into the literary contest Mr. Maitland has lately entered, and has brought his deep research and learning to bear upon the somewhat reckless assertions of Robertson, Henry, and others. We cannot altogether congratulate him on the issue: he has demolished a few of the outworks of exaggeration, but he has left the stronghold of concurrent testimony, as we think, untouched he has set, it is true, a few brilliant stars in the moral hemisphere of these ages; he has relieved the darkness, but he has left the period, as he found it, one of night; and has but established what we think most were ready to allow-that to the general rule there were many brilliant excéptions. We do not think that he has dealt at all times fairly with his adversaries, nor that he is always happy in his instances. For his friend Mein- The scene which he describes at page 122, for werc, Bishop of Paderborn, we have certainly no the purpose of explaining the phrase "benefit of great respect; we rather apprehend that some of clergy," is also confirmatory of this; whilst, at the his doings would secure him a less favorable judg-same time, it places the church in a better and ment at the Old Bailey, were he to practise them in truer light with reference to this custom than that our days and in our land, than they seem to elicit in which she has generally been seen. from this clever writer. His reasoning, in answer to the assertion that "persons of the highest rank and in the highest station could not read or write, seems to us inconclusive. The evidence that exists in support of this assertion, as generally true, is certainly, to say the least of it, in support of the probability of its truth; whilst none, that we know of, exists by which the error of it can be shown. We Te say "as generally true," because it is clear there were exceptions. Henry I. was a scholar, as his familiar designation of Beauclerc proves; so was Henry II. John could not be altogether ignorant of the contents of the books for which he gave a receipt to the Abbot of Reading; nor would Henry III. have borrowed the "Exploits of Antiochia" from the Templars, for the use of his queen, unless she had desired to know what the volume related. Whether John and the queen read for themselves, or by their chaplains, we leave to others to settle. Mr. Maitland is a learned and pains-taking man, and if he could have found anything by searching which would have enabled him positively to confute Robertson, when he says "the nobility could not write," he would not have spared trouble in the search, nor have hesitated triumphantly to produce his evidence. The reasons why men did not sign the chartularies which conveyed their gifts, as Mr. Maitland sets them down, are very ingenious; but they are, after all, conjectural; and, if the whole case is to be argued on conjectural grounds, we see not why that which lies at the very threshold, which, considering the times, is the most probable, and to which almost all writers have given assent, should not be the first received. Of the four reasons which he deduces from Mabillon, the second, viz., physical inability-is admissible only in a few cases. Of the last two-viz., "an affectation of dignity, through which many high official persons chose that their names should be written by the notary," and "all persons, following the custom of great men, preferred to have their names written by We perfectly agree with Mr. Maitland that the case, as regards the clergy, has been greatly exaggerated; but when he would lead us further, as he seems desirous of doing, till we admit by inference that the darkness of these ages was the exception, and not the rule, we say it with all deference, he has undertaken as difficult a task as that which Horace Walpole proposed to himself in his "Historic Doubts" on the reign and character of Richard the Third. A graver condemnation lies against this clever writer for admitting, without explanation, the term "his altar," with reference to the particular saint to whom gifts might be offered. It may be an oversight, but it is one hardly allowable in a matter where the consequences are so serious, and when, unfortunately, such oversights characterize a school of men in the present day, whose real sympathies are too often expressed in the tolerance of doubtful phrases on the one side, which their jealous watchfulness would not suffer on the other. It might seem from these remarks that we are professing to review the very able work which Mr. Maitland has written. We would not do him such an injustice in such form, nor ourselves so great a wrong; for it is a work which cannot be so easily passed by, and to review it is a task not so easily despatched. In the elucidation of the subject before us, essays, which treat so directly upon it, naturally presented themselves to our recollection, and the free use we have made of their contents is simply a result of the important bearing they have on the settlement of the question, as to whether the ages which are commonly designated "dark" were really so or not? That the middle ages should be dark was a natural consequence of the position in which the world was found from the sixth to the thirteenth century. When the Roman provinces were converted into barbarian kingdoms it was a legitimate result that civilization should receive a violent check; and that, though the barbarian invader might be some |