ON THE MIDDLE OR DABK AGES. 



y the learned Casiri, it appears, that the public libraries in Spain, when 

 under the Arabic princes, were not fewer than seventy ; a wonderful 

 patronage of literature, when copies of books were peculiarly scarce, and 

 enormously expensive. 



The tie, however, between science and Islamism was unnatural, and 

 could not continue long. The religion of Mahomet is, of itself, a choak- 

 damp to every generous purpose of the soul ; no moral harvest can flourish 

 under it ; and the few instances that it caji boast of to the contrary are 

 only exceptions to the general rule : scarce and scattered oases, or plots of 

 verdure, that unexpectedly peep forth in the vast ocean of its sandy desert. 

 All Mahommedan patronage of learning, therefore, has long since died 

 away ; and Arabia, which once shed so splendid a light on the rest of the 

 world, is now sunk in darkness, while all the rest of the world is beaming 

 with light around it. Those vast regions," observes M. Sismondi, with 

 a just feeling of regret, " where Islamism rules, or has ruled, are dead to 

 all the sciences. Those rich fields of Fez and Morocco, made illustrious 

 through five centuries by so many academies, so many universities, so many 

 libraries, are now nothing more than deserts of burning sands, where tyrants 

 dispute with tigers. All the laughing and fruitful coast of Mauritania, 

 where commerce, arts, and agriculture, were raised to the highest pros- 

 perity, are at present mere retreats for pirates, who spread terror, and 

 resign their toils for abominable indulgences, as soon as the plague returns 

 every year to make victims of them, and to avenge offended humanity. 

 Bagdad, formerly the seat of luxury, of power, of knowledge, is in ruins. 

 The far-famed universities of Cufa and Bassora are closed for ever. That 

 immense literary wealth of the Arabians, which we have only had a glimpse 

 of, exists no more in any region where Arabians or Mussulmans govern. 

 We are no longer to seek there for the fame of their great men, or for 

 their writings. Whatever has been preserved is entirely in the hands of 

 their enemies, in the convents of monks, or the libraries of European 

 princes. Yet these extensive countries have never been conquered : it is 

 no stranger that has plundered them of their riches ; that has annihilated 

 their population ; that has destroyed their laws, their manners, and their 

 national spirit. The poison has sprung from themselves ; it has risea 

 indigenously, and has destroyed every thing.""^ 



Of the little genuine learning that appeared in Christendom, to temper 

 the gross ignorance of the times, it is to the praise of the Church that by 

 far the greater part of it, both in the eastern and western empire, was 

 the rare boast of ecclesiastics. And it is especially to the praise of our 

 own country, and peculiarly to that of our very ancient universities, both 

 which can lay claim to an origin coeval with the middle period of the 

 Anglo-Saxon octarchy, that more than half the most celebrated scholars 

 of the times were of British birth and education. Such were Ald- 

 helm, Bede, and Alcuin., the three great Anglo-Saxon luminaries of the 

 eighth century, and the last of whom was the tutor and confidential friend 

 of Charlemagne. Such was Ingulph of the eleventh century, made 

 abbot of Croyland by William the Conqueror, and to whose history we are 

 indebted for much that has descended to us of the era we are now sur- 

 veying. Such, too, were John of Salisbury, Girald the Cambrian, and 

 the monks Adelard and Robert of Reading ; the two last of whom had 

 travelled into Egypt and Arabia, and had studied mathematics at Cordova : 



♦ De la Litteraturft du Midi de I'Europe, torn. i. Pstris. 4 torn. 1815'. 



44 



