ritories into one vast wilderness of destruction, they granted a kind of toleration to all religions, with the exception only-of gross idolatry. This indulgence caused great multitudes of christians, Jews, and other persons instructed in the arts and sciences, to settle in the dominions of the califs; where they continued in secret to improve themselves in learning, during the reign of the Ommiades, till the accession of Almansor. This prince, and his immediate successors, encouraged letters and learned men; while the emperors of Constantinople were wholly employed in compelling their subjects to adopt their respective innovations relative to faith, or in reconciling systems of belief absolutely inconsistent with each other. Among the few ecclesiastical writers of the eighth age, St John Damascen is almost the only one remarkable either for method, erudition or genius.

Since the invasion of the Lombards, Italy had been apportioned into petty sovereignties, whose chiefs were incessantly engaged in enterprises of aggrandizement, or in measures of self-defence. The subject groaned under the oppressive yoke of tyrants; and science and morality were alike neglected throughout Italy in these evil times. Only the popes, the bishops, and the clergy, still laboured in the acquirement of useful knowledge, and exerted themselves in promoting sound morality;—in restraining the passions by the salutary dread of future punishment, and in making religion respectable by the edifying regularity of its ministers, and the august apparatus of its ceremonies-well caculated, especially in an age like the one in question-ignorant and superstitious-to inspire the most brutal minds with religious awe, and to give a check to passions even the most impatient of control.

In France, the arts and sciences which had taken refuge in the monasteries, were now banished from these sacred asylums. The tyranny of the mayors of the palace; the wars of Charles Martel, and the licentiousness of the soldiery, filled every place with tumult and devastation. Ecclesiastic property was distributed by that martial prince amongst his favourite generals, who, instead of providing for the subsistence of a competent number of clergy to serve the churches, filled their colleges and the monasteries with soldiers. The monks and clerical men, thus compelled to live with the military, gradually imbibed their spirit, and at length were glad to serve in the armies, as the only expedient left to save their revenues. Ignorance and vice, of course, became almost general; and towards the middle of the eighth century, hardly was there left in France, and indeed in the whole continent of Europe, the smallest vestige of the fine arts; and the monks and ecclesiastics themselves, with some few exceptions, were scarcely qualified to read a short lesson to their people. England and Ireland were now, almost

exclusively, the seats of learning and true piety. In the midst of this obscure night, the enlightened and comprehensive mind of Charlemagne, for the good of humanity and to the immortal glory of his reign, formed the project of dissipating ignorance, and furnishing his subjects with the means of instruction. He established schools in the towns, boroughs, and villages throughout his vast domain, for the gratuitous education of children and the ignorant of every description: he wrote to all the bishops and abbots, exhorting them to erect schools or universities in their respective cathedrals and abbeys, for the laudable purpose of teaching there the liberal arts and sciences. studied them with diligence himself, and invited into France the most celebrated scholars of the age;-such were, for instance, Alcuin of York, Clement, Walnefride and others, whom he employed with success in the literary regeneration of Europe. This, however, was to be the work of time; and the life of one man is not sufficient to complete a task which the degeneracy of whole preceding ages has been gradually increasing.

He

But in the almost universal decline of intellectual improvement, the church of God still preserved its doctrine and its morality unsullied. All its councils, and the authority of history, with one accord attest this truth. We behold it with equal energy and wisdom proscribing the impious reveries of an Adelbert, and the wrangling incredulity of Clement, and of men who, like Clement, rejected the authority of councils and the Fathers, and attacked the dogma of predestination, and the discipline and morality of the church itself. Felix of Urgel pretended, that Jesus Christ was not the natural, but only the adoptive Son of God. Both Felix and Clement were condemned, and solidly refuted.

Thus in the midst of the disorders, and of the profound darkness which seemed to reign over the earth, the bishops, entrusted with the depositum of faith, continued to preserve unaltered the doctrine of Jesus Christ;-his morality, and the form of worship which he had established in his church.

Ninth century.

The Saracen was still the ruling power; but was often paralized by a spirit of sedition and revolt. The califs became at length indolent and voluptuous, and left the burden of government to the captain of their body guards, which consisted of mercenary Turks. This Turkish chief, together with the leading men at court, disposed at pleasure of the dignities of the state, and cre long, of the persons of the califs too, whom by turns they wantonly deposed, massacred, or raised to the honorary title, as they thought fit. The Arabs likewise began now to degenerate from

their primitive hardiness and valor; and the neighbouring nations and Greeks made frequent inroads into their territories.

In the Greek empire, as in that of the Saracens during the ninth century, nothing was more common than to behold emperors-raised to the throne and deposed again, by faction ;-to see the empire perpetually insulted by barbarians, while the emperors were solely occupied in abolishing or in re-establishing the veneration of holy images. In the West, Charlemagne survived, for the happiness of his people, four years longer;-honored and adored by his subjects, and revered by all the neighbouring powers. His son Lewis Debonnaire, or the good-natured, with some excellent dispositions joined also great defects. His own children rose up against him, and by the aid of intrigue and the violence of faction, procured repeatedly his deposition from the throne, to which he was as often with equal fickleness restored. His graceless sons divided the empire, and formed of it three independent monarchies;-Italy, France and Germany. None of the great qualities of Charlemagne were discernible in them, or in any of their posterity-a race without genius, without talents, and almost invariably-without virtue. The three kingdoms were incessantly at variance with each other, and were torn in pieces with civil discord; while all the neighbouring nations, the Danes, the Normans, the Saracens, inundated on every side the provinces which had constituted the bulk of the western empire. The noble plan of government established by Charlemagne, disappeared; the laws were without energy, and the people without principle or discernment. Only the popes and conscientious pastors asserted aloud the common rights of humanity in favor of the oppressed: they alone were qualified by their virtue and the salutary threats of the Divine vengeance-to oppose a strong barrier to lawless power: and notwithstanding the horrible licentiousness of the age, the dread of chastisement in the world to come terrified the most reprobate hearts, and forced them to have recourse to the pastors of the church and to religion, in order to appease the awful bodings of a troubled conscience. In these moments of serious reflection, they often referred their respective claims to the decision of the bishops, and joined with them in promoting the reform of abuses both in church and state. All the councils celebrated during the ninth century are full of exhortations, or of threats of the Divine judgments denounced against those sovereigns who disturbed the public peace, and abused their authority to the prejudice of the people, and the immunities of the church. They placed before the eyes of kings and potentates the awful moment of dissolution; and their pious remonstrances frequently produced the most admirable effects. The clergy, therefore, and the prelates of the church, notwithstanding the irregularities of some of their body, were the sole protectors of the common cause of

humanity; without their aid, and that of religion, every idea of justice and of moral virtue, must have been obliterated in the western empire.

At the commencement of the ninth century, Egbert was sole monarch over all England; whose successors down to Alfred the Great were princes, sometimes indeed pious and religious, but uniformly deficient in point of vigor and activity. Meanwhile the Danes made frequent descents upon the island; penetrated into the interior of the kingdom, and established settlements in the midst of it; while fresh disembarkations poured in in every direction, and made the coast a wilderness, and the whole nation desolate. Alfred the Great had these furious enemies to contend with during almost the whole period of his reign; and it was not before the close of his administration, that he effected the complete deliverance of England, by establishing a navy to cruise along the coast, which totally annihilated the Danish fleets.

The Saracen califs continued to patronise learning, and particularly the science of astronomy. This produced a great number of proficients in that noble and not less eminently useful branch of knowledge, some of whom have left behind them astronomical observations surprisingly exact. Many also applied themselves to the study of judicial astrology, while in other departments of literature they confined themselves more successfully to the traduction and explanation of ancient authors who heretofore had discussed them. On the contrary, in the Constantinopolitan empire the liberal arts were much neglected and despised. Leo the Isaurian had destroyed all the establishments favorable to literature; and the learned were consigned to oblivion and contempt. It was owing to the efforts of the Saracen calif Amon to attract Leo the philosopher to his court, that the emperor Theophilus first discovered the treasure which he possessed in this great man. He encouraged his talents, and rendered them important to the state, by entrusting him with the charge of public instruction. Bardas, who governed under the emperor Michael, undertook with the aid and advice of Photius, to revive learning in the eastern empire, by establishing professors of all the sciences and polite arts, and attaching to their functions both honorary privileges and regular pecuniary appointments. This was soon followed with the desired success; although, by the monuments still extant-of the literary exertions. of this period, it appears, that the men of letters studied only to imitate and expound the ancients.

In the West, sacred and profane learning continued to be taught in the prodigious number of schools established and endowed by Charlemagne; till the dreadful disorders of the succeeding reigns once more ushered in an obscure night of ignorance and barbarism, save only in the monasteries and cathe

H

drals. The incursions of the Danes, and the ravages of civil war, had almost utterly exterminated letters and the fine arts, and had destroyed nearly all the schools of education in England. More than half the century had thus elapsed, when Alfred began to communicate to his subjects his own mental acquirements, by the diffusion of learning throughout the provinces of Great Britain. He was a prince of untarnished character, possessed of every quality calculated to make a sovereign the object of adoration to his people. He was, moreover, a good architect, geometrician, philosopher and historian. Piety had converted all his efforts and all the resources of his genius and learning-to promote the general good of his fellowcreatures. To him England is indebted for a great part of those wise laws, which form at present the happiness of our constitution. Every where he established schools of theology, of arithmetic, of music and astronomy; and invited from foreign countries learned men of every description, and the most celebrated artists of every kind. In a word, he spared neither cost nor pains to inspire the English nation with a love of literature, religion and the sciences. To him also, we owe the establishment of our marine,—with many valuable privileges appertaining to the birthright of an Englishman. Widely different was the conduct of those worthless sovereigns who reigned at Constantinople, during the ninth age. Leo the Isaurian, Michael the Big, and Theophilus, all alike abused their authority-by persecuting the church of God, and prohibiting the relative veneration which it thought good to decree to holy images; till the empress Theodora enforced by law the second council of Nice, and effectually suppressed the fanaticism of the Iconoclasts. This princess treated the Manichees with still greater rigor. Above one hundred thousand of these deluded people perished by various kinds of punishments. Such of them as had the good fortune to escape, joined the Saracens in their inroads into the territories of the empire; fortified some places where their persecuted fellow-sectaries might find a secure retreat; and with them soon formed an army-formidable both for its numbers, and for that furious spirit of animosity with which it was inflamed-against the emperors, and against every individual professor of the catholic religion. They committed dreadful depredations in the provinces of the empire, and more than once annihilated its armies. At length, however, their fate was decided by a general battle, in which their leader fell; and with him was dissipated in a moment that powerful combination which the excess of rigorism had formed, and which had shaken to its centre the Constantinopolitan empire.

After Theodora had resigned the regency to her unnatural son Michael III. surnamed the Drunkard, his uncle Bardas became prime minister, and ruled with despotic authority in his