AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OP FRENCH LITERATRRE. 251 



But, though under the well-judged patronage of Charlemagne, 

 literature was aroused from her lethargic slumbers, though under 

 his jurisdiction religion was reverenced, the laws enforced, colleges 

 opened for the instruction of the young, and pensions for the remu- 

 neration of the aged, we find that after his death the rising light of 

 literature was quenched, and repulse and disrespect were the only 

 rewards that literature and the arts received from the haughty barons 

 and the licensed banditti of the tenth century. If we suppose for a 

 moment, genius alive and emulation active, what could letters do in 

 such a degraded state of society, and when the sword opened the only 

 way to distinction, the silence and extinction of literature necessarily 

 followed ? The epithets of the dark, the iron age may well be applied 

 to the tenth century ; and one would turn with disgust from the con- 

 sideration of its enormities, were it not attended with the reflection 

 that the barrier was passed and that every future change must be an 

 improvement. 



Amidst these complicated distresses learning must have been inevi- 

 tably destroyed but for the preservation of its choicest volumes in the 

 conventual libraries ; manuscripts thrown together by accident gra- 

 dually accumulated into libraries, which the abbots were disposed to 

 value though almost always unable to use. Three centuries after, 

 when the spirit of literature was again aroused, transcribers appeared 

 and the works of the immortal classic writers were no longer suffered 

 to moulder in the cells ; thus, amid the disorders of the times, 

 did learning receive this silent though useful homage, and to their 

 obscure and humble diligence the learned of every subsequent period 

 must ever be deeply indebted. 



But of evils and of misfortunes, though there be an excess, in time 

 there must be an end. At length, the tide of northern barbarism 

 was spent, and external ravages ceased ; but four centuries of revolu- 

 tion and disorder had completely changed the face of Europe, and 

 their effects are visible in the tenth century. The conquests of the 

 barbarians appear uniformly to have subsided into the feudal govern- 

 ment, which founded, as it was, on the basis of self-defence, sprung 

 naturally from their precarious situation. Nothing, however, would 

 be more repugnant to the genius of improvement : it established over 

 Europe the dreadful oriental system of castes, struck at the root of 

 royalty, or rather of all legal subordination, perpetuated slavery, 

 scattered the seeds of civil war, and in the end deluged every king- 

 dom with blood. 



Without, however, dwelling on the degradation and degeneracy of 



