every man to give accommodation to travellers; and the monasteries and religious houses were particularly expected to exercise hospitality in this way; and they did so. The chief towns were built of wood, and even the walls were of that material. The state of the mechanic arts was very low in Europe: the Saracenes had brought them to greater perfection. Painting and sculpture were only preserved from absolute extinction by the existing remains of ancient art. Charlemagne appears to have been anxious for the improvement of music; and the Italians are said to have instructed his French performers in the art of playing on the organ. The composition of Mosaic appears to have been an invention of those ages. Charlemagne introduced it from Rome and Ravenna as one of the chief ornaments of the palaces he built at Ingelheim, Nimeguen, and Aix-la-Chapelle.

The knowledge of letters was extremely low, and confined to a few of the ecclesiastics; but Charlemagne gave the utmost encouragement to literature and the sciences, founding and establishing schools in abbeys and cathedrals, and inviting into his dominions of France men eminent in those departments from Italy, and from the Britannic isles, which, in those dark ages, preserved more of the light of learning than any of the western kingdoms.

Neque enim silenda laus Britanniæ, Scotia, et Hiberniæ, quæ studio liberalium artium eo tempore antecellebant reliquis occidentalibus regnis; et cura præsertim monachorum, qui literarum gloriam, alibi aut languentem aut depressam, in iis regionibus impigrè, suscitarent atque tuebantur." Murat. Antiq. Ital. Diss. 43. Alcuin, a native of the north of England, being employed in an embassy from Offa, king of Mercia, to Charlemagne, was prevailed upon by the latter to remain at his court, and become his preceptor. A French writer acknowledges that to Alcuin his country was indebted for all the polite learning it had to boast of, in that and the following ages. The scarcity of books in those times, and the nature of their subjects legends, lives of the saints, etc., evince the narrow diffusion of literature.

The pecuniary fines for homicide, the ordeal or judgment of God, and judicial combat, were striking peculiarities in the laws and manners of the northern nations, and particularly of the Franks. With this warlike but barbarous people, revenge

was esteemed honorable and meritorious; and their manners gave but too much scope to this passion, in the excesses of the table, their propensity to gaming, and the disposition to raillery for which they were notorious. The high-spirited warrior

chastised or vindicated with his own hand the injuries he had received or inflicted. The magistrate interfered, not to punish, but to reconcile, and was satisfied if he could persuade the aggressor to pay, and the injured party to accept, the moderate fine which was imposed as the price of blood; and of which the measure was estimated according to the rank, the sex, and the country of the person slain. The law in this case, through a sad oversight, legalized, as it were, the very worst of crimes, by establishing a most inadequate and easy satisfaction. But increasing civilization abolished those barbarous distinctions. We have remarked the equal severity of the laws of the Visigoths, both in the crime of murder and robbery; and even among the Franks in the age of Charlemagne, deliberate murder was punished with death.

By their ancient laws, a party accused of any crime was allowed to produce compurgators, or a certain number of witnesses, according to the measure of the offence; and if these declared upon oath their belief of his innocence, it was held a sufficient exculpation. Seventy-two compurgators were required to acquit a murderer or an incendiary. The flagrant perjuries occasioned by this absurd practice probably gave rise to the trial by ordeal, which was termed, as it was believed to be, the judgment of God. The criminal was ordered, at the option of the judge, to prove his innocence or guilt, by the ordeal of cold water, of boiling water, or red-hot iron. He was tied hand and foot, and thrown into a pool, to sink or swim; he was made to fetch a ring from the bottom of a vessel of boiling water, or to walk barefooted over burning plough-shares; and the early annalists, among the other legends which have been generally discredited in later times, pro fess to record examples of those wonderful experiments having been undergone without injury or pain.

Another peculiarity of the laws and manners of the northern nations was judicial combat. Both in civil suits and in the trial of crimes, the party destitute of legal proofs might challenge his antagonist to mortal combat, and rest the cause upon its issue,

This sanguinary and most iniquitous custom, which may be traced to this day in the practice of duelling, had the authority of law in the court of the constable and marshal, even in the last century, in France and England.

RETROSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE AFFAIRS OF THE CHURCH PRECEDING THE AGE OF CHARLEMAGNE.

The Arian and Pelagian heresies divided the Christian church for many ages. In the fourth century, Arius, a Presbyter of Alexandria, maintained the separate and inferior nature of the second Person of the Trinity, regarding Christ as the noblest of created beings, through whose agency the Creator had formed the universe. His doctrine was condemned in the Council of Nice, held by Constantine, A.D. 325, who afterwards became a convert to his opinions. These for many centuries had an extensive influence, and produced the sects of the Eunomians, Semi-Arians, Eusebians, etc.

In the beginning of the fifth century, Pelagius and Cælestius, the former a native of Britain, the latter of Ireland, denied the doctrine of original sin, and the necessity of Divine grace to enlighten the understanding, and purify the heart; and maintained the sufficiency of man's natural powers for the attainment of the highest degrees of piety and virtue. These tenets were ably combated by St. Augustine, and condemned by an ecclesiastical council, but still continued to find supporters.

The most obstinate source of controversy in those ages was regarding the worship of images; a practice which, though at first opposed by the clergy, was afterwards countenanced and vindicated by them. It was, however, long a subject of division in the Church. The emperor Leo the Isaurian, A.D. 727, prompted, as it has been suggested, by a desire of averting the enmity of the Mahometans, who persecuted the Christians of the East on this very account, attempted to suppress this idolatry, by the destruction of every statue and picture found in the churches, and by punishment of their worshippers; but this intemperate zeal rather increased than repressed the superstition. His son, Constantine Copronymus, with wiser policy, satisfied himself with procuring its condemnation by the Church; but the efforts of Leo (Iconoclastes, as he was called), from the course he took, embroiled him so

with the Roman Pontiff, Gregory the Third, as to induce the latter to erase the emperor's name from the Dyptics, and led the way to the union soon after effected between the popes and the French court, which established the temporal power of the former, and in time raised them in a most extraordinary manner above all ecclesiastical, regal, and even imperial competitors.

From the doctrines of the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, which recommended the purification of the soul, by redeeming it from its subjection to the senses, arose the system of penances, mortification, religious sequestration, and monachism. After Constantine had put an end to the persecution of the Christians, many conceived it a duty to procure for themselves voluntary grievances and sufferings. They retired into caves and hermitages, and there practiced the most rigorous mortifications of the flesh, by fasting, scourging, vigils, etc. This frenzy first showed itself in Egypt in the fourth century, whence it spread all over the East, a great part of Africa, and within the limits of the bishopric of Rome. In the time of Theodosius, these devotees began to form communities or cœnobia, each associate binding himself by oath to observe the rules of his order. St. Benedict introduced monachism into Italy under the reign of Justinian; and his order, the Benedictine, soon became extremely numerous, and most opulent, from the many rich donations made by the devout and charitable, who conceived they profited by the prayers of the brethren. Benedict sent colonies into Sicily and France, whence they soon spread over all Europe; but though his original rule of discipline was far from being favorable either to luxury or ambition, his followers soon deviated from the good purposes and directions of the founder, and in both respects abused the ends and designs of the institution. The new order, however, made a rapid progress in the West.

In the East, monachi solitarii, were first incorporated into cœnobia by St. Basil, bishop of Cæsarea, in the middle of the fourth century; and some time before that period, the first monasteries for women were founded in Egypt by the sister of St. Pacomo. From these, in the following age, sprung a variety of orders, under different rules. The rule of the Canons Regular was framed after the model of the apostolic life. The Mendicants, to chastity, obedience, and poverty, added the obligation of begging

alms. The military religious orders were unknown till the age of the holy war. The monastic fraternities owed their reputation chiefly to the little literary knowledge which, in those ages of ignorance, they exclusively possessed.

In the fifth century arose a set of fanatics termed Stylites, or pillar-saints, who passed their lives on the tops of pillars of various heights. Simeon of Syria lived thirty-seven years on a pillar sixty feet high, and died upon it. This frenzy prevailed in the East for many centuries.

Auricular confession, which had been abolished in the East in the fourth century, began to be in use in the West in the age of Charlemagne, and has ever since prevailed in the Roman Church. The canonization of saints was for near twelve centuries practiced by every bishop. Pope Alexander III. first claimed and assumed this right as the exclusive privilege of the successor of St. Peter.

The conquests of Charlemagne spread Christianity in the north of Europe; but all beyond the limits of his conquests was idolatrous. Scandinavia and Denmark, in particular, the native seats of those Normans who afterwards fixed themselves in so many important countries of Christendom, were plunged in the grossest idolatry. Britain and Ireland had received the light of Christianity at an earlier period, but it was afterwards extinguished, and again revived under the Saxon Heptarchy.

The empire of Charlemagne, raised and supported solely by his abilities, fell to pieces under his weak posterity. "His sceptre," as has been observed, "was as the bow of Ulysses, which could not be drawn by any weaker hand." Louis le Débonaire, the only survivor of his lawful sons, was consecrated emperor and King of the Franks at Aix-la-Chapelle, A.D. 816. Among the first acts of his reign was the partition of his dominions amongst his children. To Pepin, his second son, he gave Aquitaine, the southern third of France; to Louis, the youngest, Bavaria, and he associated his oldest son, Lotharius, with himself in the government of the rest. The three princes quarrelled amongst themselves, agreeing in nothing but hostilities against their father, who had proposed an alteration in the empire in favor of his fourth son, Charles (the Bald), the fruit of a second marriage. Louis, faithlessly deserted by his vassals on "the field of lies" near Strasburg, and betrayed to his

own sons, was compelled by Lothaire to do penance in the church, and to abdicate his throne, and was afterwards shut up for some time in a cloister. Full of sorrow, he ended his days, A.D. 840, on a small island of the Rhine. The dissensions of the brothers still continued. Lothaire, now emperor, and Pepin, his brother's son, having taken up arms against the other two sons of Louis le Débonaire, Louis of Bavaria, and Charles the Bald, were defeated by them in the great battle of Fontenaille, fought A.D. 841, in which it is said that so many of the bravest generals and soldiers of the empire fell, that it was afterwards impossible to repel the invasions of the Normans, who about this time commenced their piratical attacks. By the treaty of Verdun, 843, or two years after this battle, the western part of France, termed Neustria and Aquitaine, was assigned to Charles the Bald; Lothaire, with the title of Emperor, had the nominal sovereignty of Italy, and the real territory of Lorraine, Franche Compté, Provence, and the Lyonnais. The share of Louis was the kingdom of Germany. Thus was Germany finally separated from the kingdom of the Franks, though still for some time called Oriental France (Francia Orientalis).

On the death of Lothaire, Charles the Bald assumed the empire, or, as it is said, purchased it from Pope John VIII., on the condition of holding it as a vassal to the Holy See. This prince died of poison after an inglorious reign, A.D. 877. He was the first of the French monarchs who made dignities and titles hereditary. He had also the credit of being considered as the first monarch of modern France, having introduced into his kingdom and court the use of the lingua Romana, or Romancic language, the mother of the present French, instead of the Teutonic; and Gallic instead of German manners,—so that at this period the Franks became French.

In the Reign of Charles the Bald, France was plundered by the Normans, a new race of Goths from Scandinavia, who had begun their depredations even in the time of Charlemagne, and were checked only in their purpose by the terror of his arms, and by the wise precautions he took to guard his coasts, which his successors neglected. In 843 the Normans sailed up the Seine, and plundered Rouen; while another fleet entered the Loire, and laid waste the country in its vicinity, carrying, together with

its spoils, men, women, and children into captivity. In the following year, they attacked the coasts of England, France, and Spain, but were repelled from the last by its Mahometan rulers. In 845, they entered the Elbe, plundered Hamburgh, and penetrated far into Germany. Eric, king of Denmark, who commanded these Normans, sent once more a fleet into the Seine, which advanced to Paris. Its inhabitants fled, and the city was burnt. Another fleet, with little resistance, pillaged Bordeaux. To avert the arms of these ravagers, Charles the Bald bribed them with money; and his successor, Charles the Fat, yielded them a portion of his Flemish dominions. Paris was attacked a second time, but gallantly defended by Count Odo, or Eudes, and the venerable Bishop Goslin. A truce was a second time concluded, and the barbarians only changed the scene of their attack. They besieged Sens, and plundered Burgundy, while an assembly of the states, held at Mentz, deposed Charles and conferred the crown on Eudes. A great part of the states of France, however, refused to recognize any monarch save Charles, surnamed the Simple. Rollo, the Norman, A. D. 902, compelled the king of France to yield him a large slice of the territory of Neustria, and to give him his daughter in marriage. The new kingdom was called Normandy, of which Rouen was the capital. The Normans about this time crossed the Atlantic, and established colonies in the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, and in the next century are supposed to have visited the eastern shore of North America, in the latitude of New England.

THE EMPIRE OF THE EAST DURING THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES.

While the new empire of the West was thus rapidly tending to dissolution, the empire of Constantinople still retained a vestige of its former splendor. It had lost its African and Syrian dependencies, and was plundered by the Saracens on the eastern frontier, and ravaged on the north and west by the Abari and Bulgarians. All the noble province of Romania, in which Adrian and Trajan had built so many noble cities, and expended so much on public roads, was being laid waste. The capital, though magnificent and refined, was a con

stant scene of rebellion and conspiracies; and the imperial family still exhibited a series of the most horrid crimes and atrocities: one emperor put to death to revenge murder and incest; another poisoned by his queen; a third assassinated in his bath by his own domestics; a fourth tearing out the eyes of his brother; the empress Irene, respectable for her talents, but infamous for the murder of her only son. Of such complexion was that series of princes who swayed the sceptre of the East for near two hundred years. The misfortunes of the empire were increased by the invasion of the Russians, A.D. 865, who descended the Borysthenes (Dnieper) in their rude boats and sailed into the Bosphorus to attack Constantinople. On two occasions they were repulsed, but they returned during the next century, to be again twice driven back with slaughter. During the reign of Zimisces -969-976-the Russians, having gained a great victory over the Bulgarians, again threatened Constantinople, but were finally compelled to capitulate. Thus terminated these dangerous inroads.

The next formidable enemy of the empire was the Turks, a new race of barbarians of Scythian or Tartarian breed, who abandoned their ancient habitations in Central Asia; and, in the eleventh century, taking advantage of the dissensions of the Saracens, conquered Persia, capturing Bagdad 1055. Prior to this they had victoriously penetrated as far as Northern India. In 1090 they had subdued Asia Minor and Syria; and their empire extended from the Hellespont to the borders of Chinese Tartary. These Turks are not to be confounded with the Ottoman Turks, of whom more hereafter, for they belonged to the tribe called Seljuks. The dominions of the Seljuks were afterwards divided, and a new kingdom was subsequently established by them in Asia Minor, called the kingdom of Roum, which lasted about two centuries-1075 to 1272-during which period it waged wars with the Greek empire. In 1076, Jerusalem, which had been in the possession of the Saracens for four centuries, was taken by the Seljuk Turks, who treated the pilgrims to the Sepulchre of our Lord with such insult and cruelty, that the Christian nations of Europe were roused to indignation, and sent against them those remarkable expeditions called the Crusades, which are dealt with in detail farther on in this History of the World.

Meanwhile, a tremendous revolution had taken place in Western Asia, occasioned by an incursion of the Mongols, a Tartar race who, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, under the renowned Genghis Kahn, subdued a large part of China, overturning the flourishing kingdom of Kharasna (Khiva), and conquered the greater part of Persia. After the death of Genghis, 1227, the Mongols passed into Syria and Asia Minor, pillaged Aleppo and Damascus, and destroyed the kingdom of Roum, or Iconium, the last Seljuk sultan seeking refuge among the Greeks of Constantinople, 1272. The Mongols subsequently carried their victorious armies into Europe, and devastated or conquered many of its most fertile and populous countries.

Not long after these events, and while the descendants of Palæologous still continued a feeble administration at Constantinople, there arose a power which was destined to cause the final destruction of the Byzantine empire, and establish upon. its ruins one which should rival it in extent, and far surpass it in the splendor of its conquests. This was the Ottoman Turks, so called from their founder, Othman, Ottoman, or Osman, who in 1299 invaded Asia Minor, and in a few years succeeded in establishing there a kingdom-its capital Prusa in Bythnia-which soon became one of the most flourishing states of the East.

The century and a half of the remaining history of the Greek empire, is but the narrative of its contests with the "unspeakable Turk," or Ottoman, who successively wrested from it the fairest portions of its dominions. In the middle of the fourteenth century-1360-Amurath, one of the successors of Othman, captured Adrianople, and made it his capital. He afterwards subdued Thrace and Macedonia. His successor, Bajazet, continued the tide of conquest, and for ten years besieged Constantinople, but was called away to defend his dominions against the celebrated chieftain, Timour, or Tamerlane, by whom he was afterwards, in 1402, defeated and taken prisoner. This protracted the fall of the Greek empire for some years, but Timour's empire being dismembered, the Turks resumed their encroachments, and finally, under Mahomet II., after a siege of fifty-three days, took Constantinople by storm on May 29, 1453. Constantine Palæologous, its last emperor, fell in battle, and the inhabitants were either massacred or carried

into slavery. The subjugation of the remaining dominions of the empire immediately followed, which, after an existence of 1,058 years, was now brought to an end. The minute history of the dynasties and emperors which followed each other during this long period, presents probably the most shocking and disgraceful narrative of imbecility, wickedness and crime, contained in any part of the annals of the world.

THE SARACENS IN THE EIGHTH AND NINTH CENTURIES.

In the beginning of the eighth century the Saracens subverted the monarchy of the Visigoths in Spain, and easily overran the country. They had lately founded in Africa the empire of Morocco, which was governed by Muza, viceroy of the Caliph, Valid Almanzor. A dispute about the successor to the Spanish throne led to an appeal to the African viceroy for aid and assistance. Muza sent his general, Tariff, into Spain, who in one memorable engagement, in the plains of Xeres, in Andalu sia, fought A.D. 713, stripped the Gothic king, Rodrigo, of his crown and life. The conqueror, satisfied with the sovereignty of the country, left the vanquished Goths in possession of their property, their laws, and their religion. Abdallah the Moor married the widow of Rodrigo, and the two nations formed a perfect union. One small part of the rocky country of Asturia alone adhered to its Christian prince Pelagius, who being crowned king of Oviedo, and having the support of all who disdained submission, chiefly nobles and the sons of nobles, maintained his little sovereignty, and transmitted it inviolate to his successors.

The Moors pushed their conquests beyond the Pyrenees; but division arising among their emirs, and civil wars ensuing, Louis le Débonaire, taking advantage of the disturbed condition of the country, seized Barcelona. The Moorish sovereignty in the north of Spain was warkened by throwing off its dependence on the Caliphs; and at this juncture, the Christian sovereignty of the Asturias, under Alphonso the Chaste, began to make vigorous encroachments on the territory of the Moors. Navarre and Arragon, roused by this example, chose each a Christian king, and boldly as