ON THE REVIVAL OF LITERATURE. 313^ 



attention, extending from the beginning of the fourteenth to about the middle 

 of the sixteenth century. The heart of man seemed to beat with a new and 

 more vigorous pulsation, and all the energies of the soul to be roused to the 

 proudest darings of adventure. 



In contemplating the causes of that w^onderful change in the character and 

 pursuits of civilized Europe, which this extraordinary combination of cir- 

 cumstances indicates, the following may, perhaps, be regarded as among the 

 principal. 



First, the natural spring or elasticity of the human mind, by means of 

 which, though it may for a time be borne down by a weight of ignorance or 

 oppression, it at length rouses from its torpitude, resumes its innate energy, 

 and shakes off the vampire burden with a recoil proportioned to the pressure 

 that subdued or stifled it. 



Secondly, the sudden flight and dispersion of the best and almost the only 

 literary characters of the age from the walls of Constantinople, upon the 

 capture of this elegant and renowned city by the Turks, under the victorious 

 banners of Mahomet 11. 



Thirdly, the taste for literature which, at this very period, was reviving in 

 many of the Italian states, and more particularly at Florence under the illus- 

 trious family of the Medici ; and especially the election of the celebrated 

 Giovanni de' Medici to the pontificate, under the name of Leo X. 



Fourthly, the facility aff"orded by the art of printing, discovered at the very 

 period of the fall of Constantinople, to the diffusion of useful and polite 

 learning in every direction. 



And, fifthly, and, perhaps, chiefly, the general attention and spirit of inquiry 

 which were excited throughout every country in Christendom, by the grand 

 and eventful drama of the Reformation at this time exhibiting in Germany. 



Let us attend to each of these causes in the order in which I have stated them. 



I. Vice and ignorance are the necessary companions of each other : such 

 is the immutable law of nature ; and we can no more reverse it, than we can 

 reverse the stars in their courses; and nothing can exceed the extreme to 

 which both were carried during the period of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 

 turies ; and to which the whole texture of the feudal system, and the abomi- 

 nations of the Vatican tyranny, equally contributed. 



W^hen the barbarous and intermixed tribes of Goths, Huns, and Vandals 

 poured down in successive streams from the north, and overran the different 

 provinces of the Roman empire, the conquered lands distributed by lot, and 

 thence called allotted or allodial^ were held in entire sovereignty by the differ- 

 ent chieftains, without any other obligation existing between them than that 

 of uniting on great occasions to defend the community. Additional tribes 

 still succeeded : — wider tracts of country were subdued, and many individuals 

 occupied land to a very considerable extent; while the king or captain-general, 

 who led on his respective tribe to conquest, naturally acquired by far the 

 largest portion of territory as his own share. These lands he found it con- 

 venient, in order to maintain his influence, to divide among his principal fol- 

 lowers, merely subjecting them, for the grant, to certain aids and military ser- 

 vices. 



His example was imitated by his courtiers, who distributed, under similar 

 conditions, portions of their estates to their dependants. Thus a feudal 

 kingdom became a military establishment, and had the appearance of a vic- 

 torious army, subordinate to command, and encamped under its officers in 

 different parts of the country; every captain or baron considering himself 

 independent of his sovereign, except during a period of national war. Pos- 

 sessed of wide tracts of country, and residing at a distance from the capital, 

 they erected strong and gloomy fortresses in places of difl^cult access; and 

 not only oppressed the people, and slighted whatever happened to be the civil 

 magistracy of the state, but were often in a condition to set the authority of 

 the crown itself at defian<;e. 



As the tenure by which the lands were held was military ; as there 

 was Jio art or science to occupy the mind ; as reading was seldom cultivated, 



