corruptions in grammar and syntax, by the superstitious rambling of the mendicant orders, and the jargon of the schoolThe first real restorer of polite letters was Petrarch. The next chapter pursues the history through the first forty years of the fifteenth century. This has been called, with some exaggeration, the age of Poggio Bracciolini. His diligence and good fortune recovered to the world eight orations of Cicero, a complete Quintilian, Silius Italicus, parts of Lucretius, and of Valerius Flaccus, Tertullian, twelve comedies of Plautus, and others of lesser note. The Latin style of this age is very indifferent, and naturally so, when we consider the deficiency in the means of study, the corruptions of dialects and barbarism, and the jargon which their predecessors had used. Gasparin, of Bergamo, was the first, by a style almost Ciceronian, to raise himself far above the common level. The most important literary event in this period is the revival of the study of Greek. Few and far between are the monks and scholars who had even a knowledge of its characters during the preceding ages. Here and there we do find a Greek word, but as for any extensive erudition or taste in that department, we shall look for it in vain. Some Greek priests who came to the French monasteries, brought with them psalters and legends in their own tongue. The Byzantine literature preserved and kept in use many fragments. In the middle of the fourteenth century, Petrarch and Boccaccio made some attempts to learn the language. Greek literature was lost in Italy for seven centuries. In 1423, John Aurispa, of Sicily, brought into Italy from Greece, two hundred and thirty-eight manuscripts; among them, Plato, Plotinus, Strabo, Pindar, Diodorus, etc. The amateurs of Greek literature began the work of translation amid much imperfection, and some opposition, under the charge of substituting showy for solid learning. Eugenius IV. was the first pope, Alfonso, of Naples, the first monarch, to favor the learned; the latter established the earliest literary academy. The flight of the learned Greeks, when the East fell under the Turkish yoke in 1430, diffused the spirit of ancient learning in Italy. An enthusiasm for antiquity seemed suddenly to burst forth. Yet even Italy was still at school, and did not venture upon critical philology. In France, classical learning was very low, and a barbarous vocabulary was in The same is true of England, even to a greater degree. The university and the convents of that island were in a

use.

miserable state. The Germans then displayed what have continued to be their great characteristics, seriousness, honesty, and industry in the pursuit of truth and goodness. They established schools which flourished up to the time of the civil wars of the Low Countries, and the Reformation; but only the Latin tongue was there taught. For its knowledge of the physical sciences, Europe was most indebted to the Saracens, who, in their turn, had borrowed from Greece and India. The first use of Arabic numerals in Europe appears in the thirteenth century. Adelard, of Bath, translated Euclid's Elements from the Arabic, in the twelfth century. Roger Bacon seems to have had gleams of the inductive philosophy of his illustrious namesake. Astrology and alchemy led to the true sciences of astronomy and chemistry. Medicine owes much to the experience and labors of the Saracens. Galen dissected apes, but Mundinus, of Bologna, advanced the science by the actual anatomy of the human body. Albertus Magnus, the encyclopædist of the middle ages, may be considered the most fertile writer in the world. His works fill twenty-one folios. Other writers of the same class, were Vincent de Beauvais and Berchorius, who read all they could find, and digested it more or less wisely under several heads. This period was the golden age of Spanish lyric poetry. French poetry, too, received some of its polish and elegance. England experienced a long slumber of its muse after the death of Chaucer, in 1400. Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Gower, were but the precursors of its glory. The result of this retrospect is that we are indebted to Italy for the revival of classical literature. A new sentiment and spirit of invention became infused into European languages. The heroic age of chivalry and gallantry towards women improved the popular taste. The change of religion likewise gave a new current and form to ideas. The legends of the saints were the teachers of moral sentiments. Politics had but little influence upon literature, except to nourish respect for birth, and submission to authority. The writings of this period abound with satires on the corruptions of the clergy, though not with attacks upon the church; still there were various shades of religious opinion, and much open heresy, with some secret infidelity.

The next chapter pursues the subject from the year 1440, to the close of the century. This period is arbitrarily chosen, though it has some striking coincidences. The first ten years exhibit nothing remarkable beyond the slow progress of im

provement. Hard labor was employed in the work of translation. Cosmo de Medici patronised learning. Nicolas V. founded and enriched the Vatican library; its treasures made it by far the most eminent in Europe. Poor scholars were maintained at the court of Rome, and made incumbents of vacant sees all over christendom. Poggio wrote some little treatises of antiquity and travels; Valla wrote upon the beauties of the Latin tongue, and was also the author of the earliest annotations upon the Greek of the New Testament. The next decennial period witnesses an additional enthusiasm for Greek literature, and the invention of printing. The former was incited by the controversies between the Platonists and Aristotleians. Aristotle had been laid under the ban of the church at the beginning of the thirteenth century, but Nicolas V. having removed the interdict, his writings were revered and worshipped. The first mode of printing, viz. by blocks of wood bearing rude cuts of pictures and letters, had been practised in China from time immemorial. It is well nigh impossible to decide the controversy of the original inventor of moveable types; Gutenberg of Mentz, and Costar of Haarlem, are the two competitors for the honor. The first printed book was the Latin or Mazarin Bible. The new art dedicated its first fruits to the service of Heaven. Letters of indulgence and psalters followed. In this period, Greek was first taught in the university of Paris, though under much prejudice. Purbach, a small town in Austria, gave name to a man who first restored mathematical science in Europe. The next ten years exhibit learning, as advancing hand in hand with the art of printing. The dates of time and place not being given in many even of the most important early printed books, it is impossible to fix them. Only eighteen books were printed in Paris before 1473. Caxton had exercised his art at least six years before. It made a splendid progress in Italy, under the patronage of the Medici. The king of Hungary established a university at Buda, which was destroyed by the Turks in 1527. He let in a gleam of light into deep darkness. During this period, England gave forth no book, either in Latin or in English. Some Englishmen, however, had travelled to Italy to study. The Paston letters are a curious specimen of the epistolary expertness of that island at that time. Laymen were now advancing, and the clergy were falling back. The next decad gives us the first sight of Greek types for an entire book, in 1476. Pauzer's imperfect catalogue gives one thousand

two hundred and ninety-seven as printed in these ten years, two hundred and thirty-four being editions of the classics. A noble press was established at Florence by Lorenzo. Here Virgil was published in 1471. Then began the love of collections for illustrating antiquities-medals, coins, vases, and inscriptions. Biondo Flavio was the first to make his researches collectively known, in 1471. Europe began to witness emulation among its nations for perfection in the art of book-making. Caxton printed his Game of Chess in 1474, and he followed up his trade by publishing some new book almost every year to his death in 1483. The first book printed in Spain was on the conception of the Virgin. Lebrixa was the reviving genius of the peninsula. This was the brilliant era of Florence under Lorenzo, when the treasures of the Laurentian library saw the light. Mr. Hallam gives utterance to one of the few brilliant descriptions, by which he allows himself to be turned off from his dusty path, when with a more than Ciceronian eloquence, he depicts the rich beauties which the magnificent prince had clustered together in the vale of the Arno:

"They are mentioned in connexion with the name of Lorenzo de' Medici, whose influence over literature extended from 1470 to his death in 1492. Nor was mere philology the sole, or the leading, pursuit to which so truly noble a mind accorded its encouragement. He sought in ancient learning something more elevated than the narrow, though necessary researches of criticism. In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence, on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother-city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompaniment.

"Never could the sympathies of the soul with outward nature be more finely touched; never could more striking suggestions be presented to the philosopher and the statesman. Florence lay beneath them; not with all the magnificence that the later Medici have given her, but, thanks to the piety of former times, presenting almost as varied an outline to the sky. One man, the wonder of Cosmo's age, Brunelleschi, had crowned the beautiful city with the vast dome of its cathedral; a structure unthought of in Italy before, and rarely since surpassed. It seemed, amidst clustering towers of inferior churches, an emblem of the catholic hierarchy under its supreme head; like Rome itself, imposing, unbroken, unchangeable, radiating in equal expansion to every part of the earth, and directing its convergent curves to heaven. Round this were numbered, at unequal heights, the Baptistery, with its gates worthy of Paradise; the

tall and richly decorated belfry of Giotto; the church of the Carmine, with the frescoes of Masaccio; those of Santa Maria Novella, beautiful as a bride, of Santa Croce, second only in magnificence to the cathedral, and of St. Mark; the San Spirito, another great monument of the genius of Brunelleschi; the numerous convents that rose within the walls of Florence, or were scattered immediately about them. From these the eye might turn to the trophies of a republican government that was rapidly giving way before the citizenprince who now surveyed them; the Palazzo Vecchio, in which the signiory of Florence held their councils, raised by the Guelf aristocracy, the exclusive, but not tyrannous faction that long swayed the city; or the new and unfinished palace which Brunelleschi had designed for one of the Pitti family, before they fell, as others had already done, in the fruitless struggle against the house of Medici; itself destined to become the abode of the victorious race, and to perpetuate, by retaining its name, the revolutions that had raised them to power."-Vol. I., pp. 242-4.

Germany and the Netherlands saw a few laborious men in this decad, toiling to move off mountains of error, and to see through a darkness which might be felt. They laid the deep foundation for noble successors. The nominalists of this time triumphed over the realists. New colleges were founded at Oxford and Cambridge, but they had not as yet much light either to hide or to give forth. The mathematics and arts of delineation, maps and geography, made a regular, but not rapid progress. The next decad presents a prospect of growing cheerfulness. If the dry survey of these struggling efforts of the human mind wearies us, we can turn from the path which our author pursues, at short intervals, and reflect upon our deep debt to those who first gathered together the stores of all learning. Our praise of their success should increase, as our envy for their task decreases. The scholar was often his own scribe, papermaker, printer, typecaster, and binder. Poor subordinates must they have been, whose successors now bear, without murmuring, the name of "printers' devils." We have learnt to look with veneration even upon the filthy and ragged ecclesiastics and friars of Italy, for they are the moving portraits, the outward semblances at least, of the giant scholars of the middle ages. Visiters to the Campo Santo of Bologna, and of the monastic edifices of all Italy, do not reflect as they should, that they tread upon the dust of wise and laborious men, who studied not so much for themselves as for their heirs. An ancient library furnishes a complete autobiography of the human mind. The parchment covers are the