Science in Early England. 13 



up even by women, many of whom wrote Latin and 

 French with equal ease, while all ranks were in the habit 

 of making journeys to Rome, whence they returned laden 

 with books and ideas which they did their best to dis- 

 seminate. 



The want of Anglo-Saxon scientific terms delayed the 

 translation of books into the vernacular, and those which 

 existed in any language suffered severely between the gth 

 and nth centuries at the hands of the Danes, and in a 

 minor degree from an unfortunate custom of scraping the 

 letters off old MSS. to make room for new matter. 



The barbarous Northmen, who have been described as 

 the curse of England at that period, were especially bitter 

 against monasteries and the treasures they contained, and 

 from the sacking of Lindisfarne or Holy Island in 793 till 

 the reign of Canute did incalculable damage. Under this 

 monarch, himself a Dane, the country had a temporary 

 prosperity. After him came the English restoration, then 

 the Norman Conquest, and so on ; at no time were the 

 sword and implements of war laid by for long, and those 

 whose bent would have been towards philosophy under 

 happier circumstances were forced to keep silence or to fall 

 in with the popular current. These things must be borne 

 in mind before we judge our ancestors too harshly. It is 

 well known that the Saxons made furnaces for the evapora- 

 tion of salt in Cheshire and Worcestershire, and contrived 

 dishes of metal and even of transparent glass for domestic 

 purposes, while their agriculture was conducted upon 

 sound principles, though with rude instruments. 



The sources of their scientific information were in the 

 first place Greek and Roman ; but as they accepted without 

 question the authority of Aristotle and Pliny, they made 

 no advance worth speaking of till the nth century. Much 

 progress had long before been made in other countries: 

 the great Alexandrian school, the closing scene of which 



