THE TROUVÈRES. Quant recommence et revient biaux estez, Et cil oisel chantent en lor langage, Lors chanterai Et envoisiez serai De cuer verai.-JAQUES DE CHISON. THE literature of France is peculiarly rich in poetry of the olden time. We can trace up the stream of song until it is lost in the deepening shadows of the Middle Ages. Even there it is not a shallow tinkling rill; but it comes like a mountain stream, rushing and sounding onward through the enchanted regions of romance, and mingles its voice with the tramp of steeds and the brazen sound of arms. The glorious reign of Charlemagne,* at the * The following amusing description of this Restorer of Let close of the eighth and the commencement of the ninth century, seems to have breathed a spirit of literature as well as of chivalry throughout all France. The monarch established schools and academies in different parts of his realm, and took delight in the society and conversation of learned men. It is amusing to see with what evident selfsatisfaction some of the magi whom he gathered around him speak of their exertions in widening the sphere of human knowledge, and pouring in ters, as his biographers call him, is taken from the fabulous Chronicle of John Turpin, chap. xx. "The emperor was of a ruddy complexion, with brown hair; of a well-made, handsome form, but a stern visage. His height was about eight of his own feet, which were very long. He was of a strong, robust make; his legs and thighs very stout, and his sinews firm. His face was thirteen inches long; his beard a palm; his nose half a palm; his forehead a foot over. His lionlike eyes flashed fire like carbuncles; his eyebrows were half a palm over. When he was angry, it was a terror to look upon him. He required eight spans for his girdle, besides what hung loose. He ate sparingly of bread; but a whole quarter of lamb, two fowls, a goose, or a large portion of pork; a peacock, a crane, or a whole hare. He drank moderately of wine and water. He was so strong, that he could at a single blow cleave asunder an armed soldier on horseback, from the head to the waist, and the horse likewise. He easily vaulted over four horses harnessed together; and could raise an armed man from the ground to his head, as he stood erect upon his hand.” "For light upon the darkness of their age. some," says Alcuin, the director of the school of St. Martin de Tours, "I cause the honey of the Holy Scriptures to flow; I intoxicate others with the old wine of ancient history; these I nourish with the fruits of grammar, gathered by my own hands; and those I enlighten by pointing out to them the stars, like lamps attached by the vaulted ceiling of a great palace !" Besides this classic erudition of the schools, the age had also its popular literature. Those who were untaught in scholastic wisdom were learned in traditionary lore, for they had their ballads, in which were described the valour and achievements of the early kings of the Franks. These ballads, of which a collection was made by order of Charlemagne, animated the rude soldier as he rushed to battle, and were sung in the midnight bivouacs of the camp. "Perhaps it is not too much to say," observes the literary historian Schlegel, "that we have still in our possession, if not the original language and form, at least the substance, of many of those ancient poems which were collected by the orders of that prince;-I refer to the Nibelungen Lied, and the collection which goes by the name of the Heldenbuch." When at length the old Tudesque language, |