EVOLUTION OP MODERN SOCIETY. 513 



designated as a '' i^opular" victory, according to onr modern sense. Tlie 

 barons at that time were tlie only "people." T ijustices they sought 

 to have remedied, though aifecting high and low, still primarily afiected 

 themselves. Their honor, or their power, was threatened by the sov- 

 ereign's arbitrary dispensation or disregard of justice, whether coming 

 directly to themselves or through their dependents. But the Magna 

 Charta of 1215 is important, inasmuch as it was the source of what 

 are at the present day the stable elements in the British national life 

 and character — the unsubduable love of liberty, the system of limited 

 monarchy, self-government, and universal representation. These are 

 the characteristics which have gone to form that great unwritten and 

 arbitrary code, the Britisli constitution. 



After this little digression we must go back and take up the thread 

 we have dropped. The significance of what we have just been regard- 

 ing will be evident, if not now, at any rate before we have finished. 



The tenth century found Europe enveloped in almost total intellec- 

 tual darkness. Italy and Great Britain, destined (the first again) to 

 become afterwards the home of the arts, sciences, and culture, at this 

 time slept, overcome by pernicious fruits of servitude. Franco and Ger- 

 many were, if anything, intellectually brighter. Here and there a faint 

 gleam served to make the darkness visible. " Compared with the 

 seventh and eighth centuries, the tenth," says Hallam, "was an age of 

 illumination." Still, this chrysalis condition of society continued. The 

 twelfth century shows, in France particularly, some sign of an awaken- 

 ing mind. In this centurj^, literature — the index of the mental condi- 

 tion — had its second birth. The chief sources of intellectual progress 

 at this time were, as enumerated by Hallam, (1) the institution of 

 universities; (2) cultivation of modern languages, followed by the nud- 

 tiplication of books and the extension of the art of writing; (3) the 

 investigation of the Eoman law; and (4) the return to the study of the 

 Latin classics. These are due in large measure to the growth of what 

 is known as scholasticism, originating, it is supposed, in the ninth, but 

 more generally attributed to Eoscelin, of Compiegne, in the twelfth 

 century. 



About this time the universities of Paris and Bologna were founded, 

 and a little later those of Oxford and Cambridge. From these points 

 the light of knowledge was diffused over the world till, from a few tiny 

 glimmering sparks, arose in time a brilliant illumination. The dark 

 clouds of ignorance and superstition were gradually melted and dis- 

 persed as the strong sun of reason rose higher and higher in the intel- 

 lectual sphere. 



This brings us down, in a very general way, to the beginning of the 

 fifteenth century, the period known in history as the revival of learn- 

 ing, and, a little further on, to our third great landmark in the road of 

 social progress — the fall of Constantinople, in 1453, and its far-reaching 

 effects, constituting what we understand by the Renaissance. 

 SM 94 33 



