ON THK MIDDLE OR DARK AGE!^. 



and the former of whom translated Euclid out of Arabic into Latin : a 

 dear proof, however, that Greek, the language in which Euchd himself 

 wrote, was but little known at this time among men of letters in England. 

 Such also was Roger Bacon, of the thirteenth century, whose knowledge 

 of physics had so far outstripped all his contemporaries that, like Petrarch 

 some ages afterwards, his wonderful attainments were ascribed to magic, 

 and his holding an intercourse with the devil. And such, to close the 

 list, was Wyckliff, in the fourteenth century, the bright and splendid 

 phosphor of the glorious Reformation. 



These, and as many more, had I time to enumerate them, were fur- 

 nished from the church. Nor has the laity any reason to be ashamed of 

 its contributions : Sir John Fortescue brilliantly adorned the fifteenth 

 century, t^ir John Mandeville the fourteenth ; which was also enlightened 

 by the combined and powerful talents of Grower and Chaucer, of Dante, 

 Petrarch, and Boccace. Henry I. and Henry H. are nearly equally cele- 

 brated in the twelfth century, for their patronage of learning and learned 

 men, and especially for their promoting the purest taste in Gothic archi- 

 tecture ; during .whose reigns the most sumptuous and admired of our 

 national buildings of this kind were erected. The eleventh century is 

 peculiarly signalized by the splendid talents and learning of Egitha, 

 queen of Edward the Confessor, who, in the language of Ingulph, was 

 equally admired for her beauty, her literary accomplishments, and her 

 virtue. Let us ascend a century higher, and close the whole with the 

 sacred name of Alfred ; a name no Enghshman ought to pronounce 

 without homage : equally tried and equally triumphant in adversity and 

 prosperity ; as a legislator and philosopher ; as a soldier and politician ; 

 a king and a Christian ; the pride of princes ; the flower of history ; 

 and the delight of mankind. 



We have thus rapidly travelled over a wide and dreary desert, that, like 

 the sandy wastes of Africa, to which we have just referred, has seldom 

 been found refreshed by spots of verdure, or embellished by plants that 

 should naturally belong to the country : — and what is the upshot of the 

 whole ? — the moral that the survey inculcates ? — Distinctly this ; — a moral 

 of the utmost moment, and imprinted on every step we have trodden ; 

 that ignorance is ever associated with wretchedness and vice, and know- 

 ledge with happiness and virtue. These connexions are indissoluble; 

 tliey are enwoven in the very texture of things, and constitute the only 

 substantial difference between man and man. For, if we except these 

 distinctions, " all men," observes one of the most enhghtened writers of 

 this dark period, to whom I have already adverted, John of Salisbury, 

 who was contemporary with Stephen and Henry H., and whose classical 

 Latin I shall put into literal English, all men throughout the world pro- 

 ceed from a like beginning, consist of and are nourished by hke elements, 

 drawn from the same principle, the same vital breath, enjoy the same care 

 of heaven, pass through life alike, and alike die."^ 



To which I shall only add, that, as Christianity is the most perfect kind 

 of knowledge, it must essentially produce the most perfect kind of happi- 

 ness. It is the golden everlasting chain let down from heaven to earth ; 

 the ladder that appeared to the patriarch in his dream : when he beheld 

 Jehovah at his top, and the angels of God ascending and descending with 

 messages of grace to mankind. 



* BeNagis enrfafiumj Harris, ii. 625, 



