Epidemics. 269 



With all this against the onward development of intel- 

 lect and culture, they managed to erect upon the native 

 vigour of their own minds a system of notation and of signs, 

 which has been the basis of our present advanced state in 

 the abstract sciences; and in later days their knowledge of 

 Greek writers in matters of medicine, etc., proved how 

 ready they were to appreciate the works of other men, where 

 the admission did not directly interfere with the arbitrary 

 rules of their own tenets and doctrines. 



But the nations which swarmed Europe, during the decay 

 and final fall of the Roman world, were by tenet willing to 

 adopt the faith of the conquered people, and to adapt 

 themselves to many of their laws and customs. Yet with 

 equal, if not far greater opportunities of acquiring a know- 

 ledge of the literature of the ancients, their works and 

 lives remained for centuries a cipher and an untold tale to 

 the nations of North-Western Europe, their decay in litera- 

 ture and learning advanced with rapid strides, and, as this 

 epidemic period ended in 1177, thick darkness covered the 

 face of all minds and intellects to the North-West. Italy, 

 the focus and centre of all that was learned and great, had 

 sunk into the lowest depths. 



From 1177, and onwards for 100 years, the progress of 

 knowledge was slow but distinct. 



Within this period the pointed or Gothic architecture 

 appeared, at the beginning of the century. Next the 

 English minstrels, the German minnesingers, and the 

 French troubadours began to produce a rude form of 

 poetical composition, and a kind of ruder music. Painting, 

 also, was more cultivated. These all indicate a slow but 

 increasing power of intellect. But the frequent burning 

 and persecution of heretics, as the Albigenses and 

 Waldenses, the forbidding the reading of the Bible to the 

 laity, and the more general introduction of auricular con- 



