up with the due observance of the Lord's day than many may be apt to suppose; and perilous, in the extreme, is the condition of any man or church, when either he or it, under the plea of not "relegating to particular times and places" the service which the Lord requires, despises or wilfully neglects his day and sanctuary, devoting the day to idleness, recreation, the business of the world, or even to mere intellectual pursuits, and thus setting at defiance the solemn and ever-binding command, "REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP IT HOLY."

ART. II.-The Tenth Century.

WHEN we look back over the eighteen centuries and a half which have passed away since the commencement of our era, we discern many well-known epochs at which we are wont to pause as resting places or land-marks in the extended survey, and with which every intelligent reader of history is tolerably familiar. But, like the stages in a long and tedious journey, it is the periods near the two extremes which are observed the most closely and remembered the longest, while those in the intermediate space flit somewhat vaguely and indistinctly before the mind, and the impressions which they leave behind are much less vivid and palpable. But this indistinctness in

our view of the middle ages does not result merely or chiefly from the weariness of the student of history as he toils through the record of the events of well-nigh 2000 years, but mainly from the thick darkness in which these events are enveloped, and through which we must look at them, and also from the comparative paucity of objects which are really fitted to arrest the attention of ordinary observers. And it must be at once acknowledged, that of all these dreary centuries, there is none which has been stigmatised by common consent as so emphatically and pre-eminently dreary and dismal as that which stands midway between the commencement of the Christian era and our own times,-viz., the Tenth. One writer characterizes it as ferreum, and another distinguished annalist heaps upon it in one page the complimentary epithets of plumbeum, obscurum, infelix. But, admitting the justice of this representation, which, indeed, we are not disposed to controvert, does not the very circumstance of such a description being appropriate, invest the epoch with a peculiar interest? If it is the darkest period of modern history, the age in which the human mind

reached its nadir, and in which the condition of society sunk to its lowest point of depression, it seems to us to deserve notice on that very account, and all the more that it does not usually meet with much attention from the majority-we do not say of the reading public merely, but even of well-informed. men. Some eminent historians, indeed, such as Hallam and Guizot, incline to the opinion that another and previous century-the seventh-might, perhaps, successfully dispute the right of the tenth to the bad pre-eminence which has usually been assigned to it, and might present quite as strong claims to the distinction of being the lowest and most degraded in the scale of civilization and intelligence, and that in reality there had been actual, though hardly apparent progress ever since the age of Charlemagne, i. e., since A. D. 800. We shall not discuss a question which it would require more balancing of evils than we have time for, and more elaborate investigation than might seem, at first sight, to be necessary to settle conclusively. The nadir may not have occurred in literature precisely at the same time as in religion and morals; nor, perhaps, in any of these contemporaneously with the lowest point in political and social economy; nor again, as regards any one of these several departments, may the period of deepest depression have been exactly the same in every country of Europe. All this we believe to be true. But the tenth century must be grievously maligned if it shall be found, as a whole, to contrast favourably with any other portion of the dark ages, for we are much mistaken if it is not to it that the mind habitually turns when desirous of contemplating the period of deepest gloom. We propose to take a rapid survey of the scene which this epoch exhibits, and shall endeavour to present to the reader the more prominent features of the age, especially its religious and ecclesiastical condition. It would be quite hopeless to attempt a full exhibition of all the various aspects of the period-social, political, literary, and moral-which offer themselves to our notice. We intend, indeed, to touch upon all these, but we must touch upon them lightly, reserving the greatest share of our attention and the largest portion of our space for ecclesiastical affairs.

We shall begin with the political aspect of the time. The physical geography of Europe was essentially the same a thousand years ago as now, but the political geography, how dif ferent! The same mountains, the everlasting hills, reared their summits under the same sky; the same rivers rolled their waters through the same valleys to the same seas; but as regards communities of men, and the composition and limits of empires, all is changed. Let us examine a map of Europe

in the tenth century-if we can find one-and what does it disclose? The vast empire which the genius of Charlemagne had created at the commencement of the previous century, extending from the shores of Bretagne to the Theis and the Tiber, and from the Elbe to the Ebro, had fallen to pieces in the imbecile hands of his successors. Instead of one imperial sceptre ruling a mighty empire, comprising France, Germany, and Italy, and one strong arm wielding with energy and wisdom the vast resources of so extensive a dominion, we find divisions and subdivisions, the several countries just named not only governed by separate monarchs, but the power of these princes dwindling and decaying under the benumbing influence of the feudal system, which left, indeed, a nominal supremacy to the sovereign, but which stifled and shrivelled up his real authority, and asserted a virtual independence and actual sovereignty for the greater feudatories. In France, for example, we find such suzerains as the Counts of Flanders, Champagne, and Toulouse; the Dukes of Normandy, Burgundy, and Aquitaine,-these six potentates being afterwards called "Peers of France,"-the Counts of Anjou, Ponthieu, and Vermandois, the Duke of Gascony, the Lord of Bourbon, &c., each exercising supreme authority, legislative, judicial, and military, within his own domain, and transmitting his high prerogatives to his successor. To these potent lords, and not to the nominal sovereign of the country, were the smaller feudatories subject. And so prevalent was the system of feudalism, that while, at the commencement of this century, there were already in France the considerable number of twenty-nine hereditary fiefs, at its close they had increased to fifty-five.

Harassed by such turbulent and formidable dependants, or rather competitors and rivals and often avowed foes, the central power of the monarch was, as we have said, little more than an empty name-the mere shadow of what it was when wielded by the genius and vigour of Charlemagne. It is true, indeed, that in the formal homage which even the greatest feudatories yielded to the reigning sovereign, however weak and despised he might be, and however little they might dream of obeying his behests or reverencing his authority, there lay concealed the germ of a supremacy which had once possessed real vitality and power, and which was again to rise into proud predominance and overshadow and subjugate their descendants of long distant generations. But during this century

* The difficulty of finding such a map in this country is not creditable to us. In France and Germany historical atlases, exhibiting the state of the world at different periods, are more common, and are extremely useful. We are happy to notice the laudable attempt to supply the defect by Mr Brewer in his "Historical and Geographical Atlas" recently published.

the sovereign authority was in a great measure in abeyance throughout Europe. We no doubt hear of a king of France, a king of Italy, and an emperor of Germany, but a well compacted and consolidated dominion, under the sway of a strong central government, we look for in vain.

The social results of feudalism will come to be noticed afterwards, but as regards its effect upon the body politic, it is obvious that it tended to cripple the energies and obstruct the movements which the nation, as such, might otherwise have put forth. With such a limited and shifting obligation of military service as the feudal tenures imposed, and such diverse and often conflicting sentiments as actuated the men who were at once the nominal but formidable vassals of the crown and the warlike lords of many subordinate vassals, scarcely any truly national enterprise could be hopefully entered upon, far less prosecuted to a successful issue. Hampered and thwarted, the most energetic monarch found it impossible to weld into a homogeneous mass, which he could effectively handle, the disjointed fragments of which his nominal kingdom was composed. And yet, while it cannot be denied that feudalism threw many obstacles in the way of national action and the achievement of national greatness, and while, in such a state of things, the mass of the population must ever be degraded into serfdom and exposed to oppression, it must at the same time be admitted that the feudal system furnished a bulwark, though by no means the best bulwark, against some great and imminent political evils. It tended to check foreign wars and aggressions by the very incapacity for such enterprises which it engendered. It also effectually muzzled the tyranny of the crown, and rendered aught approaching to the character of an Asiatic despotism impossible. Nor can it be denied that, at the other extreme of the social scale, it interposed a barrier against anarchy. In truth, while it was very far from elevating nations or society, it prevented the total overthrow and ruin of both. It flung a powerful aristocracy in the path alike of a central despotism and of the wild torrent of popular tumult, substituting, it is true, a system of oppression of another kind, but one which contained in it, if not fewer evils or more redeeming characteristics for the present, at least more elements of hope for the future than either of the other two.

Such, without descending to minute details, was the political condition of a large portion of Europe at the period of which we treat,-of the whole of what at the commencement of the previous century constituted the mighty empire of Charlemagne, and to a large extent of other countries also to which his sway had not extended, and in which the feudal system

was not as yet so firmly established. England-or rather the southern portion of what now bears that designation-had just been blessed with the rule of the noble Alfred, a prince to whom the mind fondly turns as one of the very finest specimens which the world has ever seen of royal manhood and kingly worth. Under him a considerable consolidation of territory had taken place. Wessex, his proper hereditary domain, had attained, if not supremacy, at least predominance, in the south; Mercia in the centre, and Northumberland in the east, had become subordinate, though not subject; and in this century the Anglo-Saxon monarch Athelstan, the grandson of Alfred, was recognised at home and abroad as the sovereign of England. Yet the records of the period tell of grievous tumults and disorder,-of internal feuds in church and state, in which the clergy and monks take a leading part, and the name of Dunstan is peculiarly prominent, and of external struggles with the Danes, whose devastating inroads, though checked by the celebrated battle of Brunanburgh, became more and more formidable towards the close of the century, and soon afterwards placed the crown of England on the head of Canute.

As regards the state of Scotland during this period, not even the classic latinity and stately style of Buchanan can do more than throw a decent veil over the baldness of his narrative and the scantiness of his information. The commencement of the century introduces us to the seventy-fourth of that long and shadowy, and, we must add, dreary line of kings, which stretches back, in dim perspective, to Fergus I., and at its close we find the eighty-second of the series on the throne,the eighty-fourth being the "gracious Duncan," with whom, and the incidents and actors connected with his tragical death, the genius of a great poet has made us a thousandfold more familiar than we are with any other events or personages, real or fictitious, of those misty times. We read of almost constant wars,-sometimes an alliance with the Anglo-Saxons against the Danes, and sometimes an alliance with the Danes against the Anglo-Saxons, and sometimes single-handed against either or both. But of all the conflicts which the tenth century witnessed in Scotland, the only one which keeps a prominent and permanent place in the memory is the overthrow of the Scandinavian invaders at Luncarty. The historian's superlative, when speaking of the "res turbulentissimæ domi," but too correctly describes the internal condition of the country during this period.

Turning to Spain, and glancing at the map to which we formerly referred, we find almost the whole peninsula in the possession of the Moors, the Khalifat of Cordova extending from