between the Mediterranean and Northern Europe was by inland routes. It is possible that even the frozen North benefited more from this communication than England under its Anglo-Saxon rulers.*

Leaving their Northern homes, these merchant corsairs had ravaged the coast of Europe as far as Spain, had plundered many cities, including Paris, and had made their name terrible even in Italy itself. In 911, Charles the Simple of France locates a band of them on French soil, in a district afterwards known as Normandy, thinking thereby to purchase their allegiance. The scheme proved a marked success. Rolf, or Rollo, the pirate chief, receives baptism, takes the title of duke, and becomes a loyal servant of his king. It was by Norman

* Upon the island of Gothland, in the Baltic, have been found great numbers of Roman and Byzantine coins, and its surface is dotted over with the ruins of ancient buildings, many of them of great size and architectural beauty. Canon Adams, of Bremen, a chronicler of the eleventh century, tells of a trading city at the mouth of the Oder, " a town rich in the wares of all Eastern people, and which contains much that is charming and precious.”—“The Hansa Towns," by Zimmern, p. 23. The towns of the Hanseatic League derived their wealth from trade with the Baltic. It is a curious fact that so early as the tenth century German traders dealing with England paid part of their tribute in pepper, a product peculiar to the East. Idem, p. 16. Some writers have traced a connection between the Venetians of the Adriatic and the Vends or Venedes of the Baltic. Idem, p. 23. See also, as to this whole subject, "The Viking Age," by Paul Du Chaillu, especially vol. i. chap. xv. pp. 262 and 276; also vol. ii. p. 219. When the English opened a trade with Russia, in the days of Elizabeth, they attempted one trip to Persia by the old route of the Northmen, up the Dwina, down the Volga, and across the Caspian Sea. Camden, p. 418. This voyage, which, I believe, has never been noticed by later historians, shows that the route was known even five hundred years after the Norman Conquest.

help, later on, that France was raised to the rank of an independent kingdom; and Hugh Capet, instead of being a vassal of kings of German lineage, became the father of French sovereigns.*

For over a century and a half these Northmen had been settled on the soil of France, intermarrying with the natives, imbibing the ancient civilization, and, with the aptness for culture which marks a mixed race, making even more rapid progress than the French themselves. As a Teutonic people, they were perhaps remotely related to the Anglo-Saxons, but they bore little resemblance to their distant kinsmen whom they found in England. William of Malmesbury, the old chronicler, says: "The Saxons vied with each other in their drinking feasts, and wasted their goods by day and night in feasting, while they lived in wretched hovels; the French and Normans, on the other hand, lived inexpensively in their fine large houses, were besides studiously refined in their food, and careful in their habits.”

These, then, are the men who, in 1066, to the number of sixty thousand, about one third Normans and the rest made up of other nationalities, land at Hastings, conquer England with its two millions of inhabitants, and make it for centuries a French country. The conquest was an easy one. The Frenchmen, for so we may call them all, were trained warriors, fighting on horseback, with long steel-pointed lances, and clad in complete armor. The English fought on foot; some in armor wielded heavy battle-axes, but the mass of the army was composed of rude peasants carrying scythes, clubs, and sharpened poles. The heavy but swift-moving cavalry gave the victory to the foreigners.

*Fisher's "Outlines of Universal History," p. 247.

It took but a few years under the rule of the conquerors to change the face of England. The land was registered in Domesday - book, and, to a large extent, parcelled out among the retainers of the Norman king. Each new proprietor set out at once to build a castle for his own protection, and to overawe his neighbors. Even the stone of which these castles were constructed was brought from Caen, in France.* At the death of King Stephen, a century later, eleven hundred and fif teen of these fortresses dot the surface of the island. Within the castle, at court, in the halls of justice, and even in the church, the inmates are foreigners and the speech is French. In the schools, pupils were in time forbidden to speak English. Later on, in the universities, the students were required by statute to converse in Latin or French. In the thirteenth century laws are written and judicial proceedings are all carried on in French. For nearly three hundred years the English language almost disappears among the upper classes, and, looking only at the surface, it seems forgotten. It continued mainly, if not solely, among the small proprietors, the tradesmen of the towns, the peasants, and the serfs.S

But the Normans did much more than to build castles and introduce a foreign speech and literature. The conquest was made in one of the great ages of history-an age which was not to be paralleled until the days of the Renaissance. It had been predicted, for so the clergy read

* Ranke, i. 35.

William the Conqueror, it is said, attempted to learn English, but gave up the task in despair.

Regulation of Oriel College, 1328.

§ Hallam; Green; Freeman in The Chautauquan, March, 1891.

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the Book of Revelation, that the year 1000 was to witness the destruction of all things terrestrial, and during the preceding century the world came to a standstill, awaiting the dread event. Within three years after the close of the century, when it was discovered that the prediction was unfounded, men awoke to a new life. Architecture felt the first impulse, and churches were renewed in every part of Europe, especially in Italy and France. Then were formed the first associations of builders, essentially composed of men bound by a religious vow, who cultivated the art in convents and monasteries.* The Frenchmen loved art. Already in the seventh century they had sent to England some of their "masters in stone." Now, under the Normans and their successors, they proceeded to cover the island with superb cathedrals, which, inferior only to those in France itself, bear witness, not alone to the architectural skill, but to the spirit of devotion which animated the builders. Later on came the Crusades, in which the Normans played so great a part, and which brought Europe into contact with the civilization of the Saracens and Jews, developing a love of learning little known before in Western Europe.

From the time of the subversion of the Roman Empire by the barbarians, the cultivation of letters had been carried on exclusively in the monasteries, and in the chapels of cathedral churches. Now a new spirit was abroad. The communes achieved their independence in France and Italy; and, at the same time, the new life given to the study of Roman law, and the development of scho

"The Arts in the Middle Ages," by Paul Lacroix (translated, London, 1870), pp. 377, 378.

t Idem, p. 356.

lasticism in the North of France, united at Bologna and Paris a numerous body of teachers and scholars, who were organized in the twelfth century into the corpora tions known as universities, upon the model of those long before established by the Moors in Spain.* First in Northern Europe arose the University of Paris, which grew out of the teachings of Abelard from 1103 to about 1136. Here, as elsewhere, the Normans were apt pupils. Between the Conquest and the death of King John, they established five hundred and fifty-seven schools in England. Among these institutions were the two renowned universities which have contributed so much to the glory of English learning.

The early historians of England carried back the foundation of Oxford to the days of King Alfred, but that myth is now abandoned. It appears from the records that nothing is known of any school or so-called university at Oxford until the year 1133, when a teacher from Paris, Robert Pullus, began to lecture there on the Bible. He taught for five years, and then went to Rome. A few years after his departure, Vacarius, an Italian, appeared in England and began a series of lectures at Oxford on the Civil Law, which he had studied at Bologna. In 1149, he made a careful abstract for English students

* Abelard, it is claimed, was educated at the Moorish university in Cordova.

See for an interesting history of this university and its influence on France, "De l'Organization de l'Enseignement dans l'Université de Paris," par Charles Thurot, Paris.

Before the Conquest, they

Taine's "English Literature," p. 61. had founded at Bec, in Normandy, "the most famous school of Christendom."-Green. From this school came the first two Norman Archbishops of Canterbury, the great scholars Lanfranc and Anselm; both, however, Italians.