HISTORY AND ETHNOLOGY. 87 



In surveying the civilization of the middle ages, we find Hoinan 

 demoralization on the one hand, and Asiatic and Germanic barbarism on 

 the other. Not one city was spared by the destructive Asiatic hordes 

 under Attila, and though all German tribes did not equal them in rapacity, 

 still the name of Yandal has become proverbially infamous as a term 

 expressive of every attack upon refinement. 



In the West, arts and sciences, trade, &c., were still in their infancy, 

 but agriculture soon became the tie which, in the new realms, attached to 

 the soil. It cannot be denied that the agriculturists suffered as bondmen, 

 but on the other hand there sprang up in the flourishing cities a powerful 

 middle class, holding rank between a warlike nobility and the degraded 

 serfs and rustics. By degrees, as wants began to be felt, labor was lightened 

 by useful inventions, wealth was acquired, and a feeling of dignity roused, 

 but with it a desire for greater liberty. 



The influence of the clergy kept pace with temporal progress. They 

 soon constituted the first and most powerful rank in the social scale. 



War furnished an exhilarating excitement to the nobility, and, for want 

 of external wars, they frequently came in conflict with cities and boroughs, 

 and quarrels occasionally arose between neighboring barons and lords. In 

 this way the laws of physical force usurped the province of right and 

 justice, and the aristocracy did not hesitate to participate in robbing 

 travelling merchants and tradesmen, and laying heavy taxes on them. 



The ruling princes often needed the assistance of their barons in 

 suppressing external foes ; so they could ill afford to arrest the reign of 

 club-law. 



Arts and learning had taken up their abode with the clergy, though they 

 were poorly enough represented among them, at least in Germany. In the 

 latter part of the middle ages great progress was made in the fine arts, sci- 

 ences, and trades. Though convents and seminaries were as yet the only 

 abodes of learning, yet in the 12th and 13th centuries there were erected 

 universities and other colleges, which increased rapidly in number and con- 

 sideration. The university of Bologna was celebrated as a law-school, that 

 of Salerno boasted of its professors in medicine. Other cities vied with 

 each other in the erection and embellishment of these institutions. Those 

 of Oxford, Paris, and Cambridge, were founded about 1200 ; Kaples, 1226 ; 

 Toulouse, 1228 ; Salamanca, 1240 ; Lisbon, 1290 ; Rome, 1313 ; Prague, 

 1349; Vienna, 1365; Heidelberg, 1386; Leipsic, 1409; Upsala, 1476 ; 

 Tiibingen, 1447 ; and Copenhagen, 1479. The Arabs, too, had their 

 schools in Bagdad, Bassora, Cairo, Alexandria, Fez, Morocco, Sevilla, 

 Granada, and especially in Cordova. So the Jews erected schools at 

 Tiberias and Babylon. 



As the cities and towns of Europe grew more independent, they enlarged 

 their privileges, made laws for themselves, and even formed confederations 

 among each other. Such were the Hermandad in Spain, the Lombard 

 Union in Upper Italy, and the Hanseatic League in Germany. Yet quarrels 

 were inevitable, sometimes with the patricians or nobility, at others with the 

 guilds and corporations, and the disputes would often terminate in blood- 



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