dom of experimental philosophy. Not less did the Crusades set men to thinking, enlarge their knowledge of mankind, awaken just views of the superior culture of the Greeks, and provide for the Revival of Learning.

13. BARBARISM.

If it startles us to find the Dark Ages settling down upon Christian civilization just when it had begun a glorious career of Truth and Life among the nations, we shall find our surprise reversed when we look into the world movements of those times. It is rather astonishing that Christianity itself survived.1 For take any map of Europe at the close of the fifth century, and what do we behold? The inundations of barbarism had deluged the fairest seats of Christendom; and all those earliest sources of Latin illumination in Northern Africa, where Tertullian and Cyprian and Augustine had glorified their successive ages, are included in the desolations. Where Carthage and Hippo had nurtured saints and scholars, we find the kingdom of the Vandals. From the Pillars of Hercules northward to the Loire stretches the dominion of the Visigoths. The Salian and Riparian Franks spread over the North, from Brittany to the sources of the Weser. The Ostrogoths occupy all Italy, and nearly the whole Eastern shore of the Adriatic, sweeping round by the Danube to the Rhineland. To deal with these rude races, and give them the law of Christ, was a

1 See Note K".

work to which the Church addressed herself with

fidelity. But look again at the map of Europe and the Mediterranean in the age of Charlemagne. The movements of the barbarians had been like the waves of the sea. From beyond the Danube the Lombards had poured into Subalpine Italy, and Teutonized the fair plains watered by the Po. But far more terrible is the condition of North Africa and Spain; the Mohammedans have taken them for a prey: nearly all of Spain is the Caliphate of Cordova. And now the Northmen are pouncing upon the Franks, penetrating all their harbours and navigable rivers; under the name of Danes spreading themselves in England; and waxing more and more terrible, till the Litany itself receives a new suffrage, for Christians in their churches cried unto heaven, "From Rollo and the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us."

14. EXPIRY OF THE DARK AGES.

I have not named the Huns and the Magyars swarming in from the Tartar hives of Asia, but perhaps I have said enough to remind you what a field for research is here opened to the student; and quite enough to explain the intervention of the "Dark Ages." What a dilution of all good, what an infusion of all evil, we have here! For a time, the Arabians, who had stolen Christian learning,' became its conservators in their own East,

"Where science with the good Al-Maimon dwelt,"

and in Spain, where Christians went to them for

1 See Note L".

knowledge. We retain the Arabic numerals, and most useful they are; and algebra is the most charming of mathematical processes; but while the Infidel kept the magazine of science till Christians once more could bring out its stores, the increase of knowledge among men owed little or nothing to the schools of Islam. Quickened to active exertions of mind by the Scholastics, and enlarged by the Crusades in every faculty that is nurtured by observation, Christendom awakes at the close of the fourteenth age "like a giant refreshed with wine." Here we greet the Revival of Learning. Bajazet was now menacing Constantinople, but God checked him, for Tamerlane had invaded Syria. In Europe the shameless Papal schism perpetuated the scandals of the Dark Ages, but was a help to the great awakening. In England the Plantagenets came to an end by the murder of Richard the Second, never to be forgotten while Shakespeare's genius reduces English history to incomparable painting in words. The accession of the House of Lancaster reminds us that the crusading spirit is not yet extinct, when King Henry the Fourth is made to say,

"Therefore, friends,

As far as to the sepulchre of Christ . . .
Forthwith a power of English shall we levy .
To chase these pagans in those holy fields
Over whose acres walked those blessed feet
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed
For our advantage on the bitter cross."

With commendable license, though with apocryphal history and a gross anachronism, the incom

parable poet manages to wind up the play with a rhythmical flourish, in which the whole spirit of the preceding centuries is epitomized. The language, slightly changed, might well describe St. Louis, with whom the Crusades in fact expired:

66

Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought

For Jesu Christ in glorious Christian field,
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross
Against black pagans, Turks, and Saracens ;
And, toiled with works of war, retired himself
To Italy, and there at Venice
gave
His body to that pleasant country's earth,
And his pure soul unto his captain Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long."

But when the Crusades were turned against Christians, who were massacred by whole races in the South of France, under the bloody Innocent III., it was time to stop. And when Henry dies in the Jerusalem chamber at Westminster, crusading is extinct forever, and the new period is well advanced. I always note the death of Richard and of Chaucer, in A. D. 1400, as the limit of the dark period. One century more of the Middle Ages remains; it is the thrilling, charming, marvellous Cinque-Cento, the fifteenth century.

15. THE CINQUE-CENTO.

We magnify the Cinque-Cento, and use this term with reference to the fine arts too exclusively. I borrow this convenient term for the age that brought with it the elements of all we now enjoy, in letters and arts, in civilization, in freedom, in the

restoration of truth to the nations, and in a genuine Reformation to our English forefathers. In a rapid review of this century of wonders, I hasten to a close of this Lecture.1

At the opening of this age, we find John Huss confessor to the Queen of Bohemia. Note that; and this also: the infamous statute for burning heretics is enacted in England, under which Sawtré perishes as a Wiclifite. Jerome of Prague is studying in Oxford. Tamerlane enters Bagdad and Damascus, and prepares to invade Asia Minor. In A. D. 1409 there are not less than three Popes, cursing and excommunicating one another, and men in nations for their respective adhesions. In A. D. 1412, Huss burns a papal indulgence, and he and Jerome denounce the traffic in such things. This was a century before Luther imitated them. Shortly after, Huss himself is burned at Constance, and Sigismund earns infamy by betraying him. The Council of Constance revives the traditions of Frankfort, and deposes the Pope. It has its glory and its shame. It burned Jerome of Prague after Huss, and ordered Wiclif's bones to be cremated and scattered. This Council closes in A. D. 1418. We soon reach the romantic episode of Joan of Arc; the Papal schism is closed by the heroic action of the Council of Basle, which continues the traditions of Frankfort, and deposes another Pope.

And here we may turn to the more gratifying field of Art and Literature. We have seen that in England the death of Chaucer marks the limit

1 See Note M".