8 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 
Jerusalem, Alexandria and Rome, stand out before us 
with truthful vividness. But on the whole the regis- 
tration of material for history has been much more full 
and consecutive since the Christian era than before it, 
and to this general statement the darkest of what we 
call the Dark Ages, as, for example, the period of 
Merovingian decline in the seventh and eighth centu- 
ries, forms but a partial exception. The registry of 
laws and edicts was supplemented by the innumerable 
chronicles which we owe to the marvellous industry of 
the monks. He who looks over a few of the seven 
hundred majestic volumes of the Abbé Migne’s collec- 
tion, will come into the fit frame of mind for admiring 
that gigantic and patient labour which most of us fail 
to revere only because its results have never appealed 
to our sense of sight. For literary excellence, monkish 
Latin has little to charm us as compared with the diction 
of Cicero, but in its vast treasure-houses are enshrined 
the documents upon which rest in great part the foun- 
dations of our knowledge of the beginnings of modern 
society. Ages which have left behind so much written 
registry of themselves are not to be set down as wholly 
dark. 
What would English history be without the mo- 
nastic chronicles of Malmesbury, of St. Albans, of 
Evesham, of Abingdon, and many another? . If you 
would understand the mental condition of our fore- 
fathers in King Alfred’s time, with regard to diseases, 
medicaments, and household science in general, there 
is nothing like the mass of old documents published 
by the Record Office under the quaint title of “ Leech- 
doms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of England.” Or 
1 Ewald, “ Paper and Parchment,” p. 279. 
