PREFACE. 



'ITH this new and last volume, the subject of which 

 is not less replete with interest than that of the 

 three preceding volumes, we bring to a close our 

 work upon the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 



In the beginning of the Middle Ages, at the 

 commencement of the fifth century, the Barbarians 

 made an inroad upon the old world ; their renewed inva- 

 sions crushed out, in the course of a few years, the Greek 

 and Roman civilisation ; and everywhere darkness succeeded to 

 light. The religion of Jesus Christ was alone capable of resisting 

 this barbarian invasion, and science and literature, together with the 

 arts, disappeared from the face of the earth, taking refuge in the 

 . churches and the monasteries. It was there that they were preserved 

 as a sacred deposit, and it was thence that they emerged when Christianity 

 had renovated pagan society. But centuries and centuries elapsed before the 

 sum of human knowledge was equal to what it had been at the fall of the 

 Roman empire. A new society, moreover, was needed for the new efforts of 

 human intelligence as it resumed its rights. Schools and universities were 

 founded under the auspices of the clergy and of the religious corporations, and 

 thus science and literature were enabled to emerge from their tomb. Europe, 

 amidst the tumultuous conflicts of the policy which made and unmade 

 kingdoms, witnessed a general revival of scholastic zeal ; poets, orators, 



