28 OLD AND NEW WAYS OF TREATING HISTORY 
fashioned student of history was apt to confine his 
attention to the so-called classical period, such as the 
age of Perikles, or of Augustus, or of Elizabeth, or of 
Louis XIV. Such a habit is fatal to the acquirement 
of anything like a true perspective in history. What 
should we say of the botanist who should confine him- 
self to Jacqueminot roses and neglect what gardeners 
call weeds? How far would the ornithologist ever get 
who should study only nightingales and birds of para- 
dise? In truth the dull ages which no Homer has 
sung nor Tacitus described have sometimes been criti- 
cal ages for human progress. Such was the eighth 
century of the Christian era, which witnessed the rise 
of the Carlovingians ; and such again was the eleventh, 
the time of Hildebrand and William the Norman. 
This restriction of the view to literary ages has had 
much to do with the popular misconception of the 
thousand years that elapsed between the reign of 
Theodoric the Great and the discovery of America. 
For many reasons that period may rightly be called the 
Middle Ages; but the popular mind is apt to lump 
those ten centuries together, as if they were all alike, 
and to apply to them the misleading epithet, Dark 
Ages. A portion of the darkness is in the minds of 
those who use the epithet. The Germanic reorganiza- 
tion of Europe, and the fearful struggle with Islam, 
did indeed involve a break with the ancient civiliza- 
tion, but there was no such absolute gulf as that which 
exists in the popular imagination. The darkest age 
was perhaps that of the wicked Frankish queens, 
Brunhild and Fredegonda; but the career of civiliza- 
tion was then far more secure than it had been a 
thousand years earlier, in the age of Perikles, when all 
