HE first restorers of learning in Europe were the Arabians, who, in the course of their Asiatic conquests, becoming acquainted with some of the ancient Greek authors, discerned and justly appreciated the knowledge and improvement to be derived from them. The caliphs procured from the eastern emperors copies of the ancient manuscripts, and had them carefully translated into Arabic; esteeming principally, if not exclusively, those which treated of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics; all the other branches of Grecian literature they seem to have totally neglected; not even Homer having found an Arabian translator, nor any Grecian poet, orator, or historian, except Plutarch. They disseminated their knowledge, however, such as it was, in the course of their conquests, and founded schools and colleges in all the countries they subdued.

The western kingdoms of Europe became acquainted with the learning of the ancients through the medium of these Arabian translations, which possibly, after all, were not made from the originals, but from Syriac versions only. Charlemagne caused Latin translations to be made from the Arabian; though possessing already a Latin copy of Aristotle's Logic made from the original Greek, which appears to have been consulted by Alcuin and Bede. He founded, also, after the example of the caliphs, the universities of Bononia, Pavia, Osnaburg, and Paris. Alfred, with a similar spirit, and by similar means, introduced a taste for literature into England; but the subsequent disorders of the kingdom replunged it into barbarism. The

Normans, however, brought from the continent some tincture of ancient learning, which was kept alive in monasteries, and which, it has been supposed, had been propagated from Ireland, as the refuge of the learned, during the troubles in Germany. In these monasteries the monks were meritoriously employed in transcribing a few of the ancient authors, along with the legendary lives of the saints. In this dawn of literature in England appeared Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffrey of Monmouth, names distinguished in the earliest annals of poetry and romance. John of Salisbury, a moralist; William of Malmesbury, author of the annals of England before the reign of Stephen; Giraldus Cambrensis, known in the fields of history, theology, and poetry; Joseph of Exeter, author of two Latin epic poems on the Trojan war, and the war of Antioch, or the Crusade,-may all still be read with pleasure..

But this era of a good taste in letters was of short duration. The taste for classical composition and historic information yielded to the subtleties of scholastic divinity as taught and practiced by Lombard and Abelard, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Two causes may particularly be assigned for this state of things; first, the necessity men lay under of discussing all philosophical or theological questions in the way of public disputation, before the art of printing had enabled them to communicate their sentiments otherwise; and, secondly, the introduction of the Aristotelian philosophy, not by the direct channel of the Eastern empire, with the comments and illustrations of those who really understood it, but in the imperfect and often faulty translations of the Arabians. The general attention

was also at this time drawn to the rules and doctrines of the Roman civil law, by the lectures of the celebrated Irnerius, and the elucidations of other teachers, who, in the twelfth century, propagated the study of the Justinian laws in Europe. The revival of this study, which tended greatly to exalt the imperial and temporal authority, was quickly followed by the collection of canon laws called the Decretals of Gratian, spoken of in another place. Both together formed a complicated system of jurisprudence, which, wherever the two interests came into competition, required the closest application, and no small knowledge of all the arts and expedients of chicanery. In proportion as the study of the law occupied the attention of the northern parts of Italy, the study of medicine seems to have been cultivated in the south, where the school of Salerno became particularly eminent. The universities in general followed these changes; and in addition to the Trivium and Quadrivium, to which they had been previously confined, theology, law, and medicine, began to have their several professors, and degrees to be conferred in all these faculties. The revival of the Roman law, and study of jurisprudence, led also to the formation of the French parliaments. The amusements of the vulgar in those periods were metrical and prose romances, unintelligible prophecies, and fables of giants and enchanters.

In the middle of the thirteenth century appeared a distinguished genius, Roger Bacon, an English friar, whose comprehensive mind was filled with all the stores of ancient learning; and who possessed a discriminating judgment to separate the precious ore from the dross, and a power of invention fitted to advance every science which was the object of his study. He saw the insufficiency of the school-philosophy, and first recommended the prosecution of knowledge by experiment and the observation of nature. He made discoveries of importance in astronomy, in optics, in chemistry and medicine, and in mechanics. He reformed the calendar, discovered the construction of telescopic glasses, forgotten after his time, and revived by Galileo, and has left a plain intimation of his knowledge of the composition of gunpowder. Yet this most superior genius believed in the possibility of discovering an elixir for the prolongation of life, in the transmutation of metals into gold, and in judicial astrology.

A general taste prevailed for poetical composition

in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Troubadours of Provence or Languedoc, for Toulon was the principal seat of the Provençal muses, wrote sonnets, madrigals, and satirical ballads, and excelled in extempore dialogues on the subject of love, which they treated in a metaphysical and Platonic strain. As theirs was the poetry of courts, of polished and artificial society, pastorals seem to have been excluded; or, if in a few instances attempted, to have failed. We stand chiefly indebted to them, perhaps, for the great variety of measures to be found in modern poetry. They contended for the prize of poetry at solemn meetings, where princes, nobles, and the most illustrious ladies, attended to decide between the rival bards; and some of those princes, as Richard I. of England, Frederick I., emperor of Germany, are themselves celebrated as Troubadours of eminence. Many fragments yet remain of their compositions. It is usual, indeed, to reckon among them two kings of Aragon, one of Sicily, a dauphin of Auvergne, and a prince of Orange, ecclesiastics, monks, libertines, devotees, and even one inquisitor. The Troubadours dealt in lyric poetry; the Trouveurs, or northern poets, wrote epic.

The transference of the papal seat to Avignon in the fourteenth century, familiarized the Italian poets with the songs of the Troubadours, and gave a tincture of the Provençal style to their compositions, which is very observable in the poetry of Petrarch and Dante. The latter, indeed, did not altogether disdain to write in the Provençal language. The Divina Commedia of Dante first introduced the machinery of angels and devils in the room of the pagan mythology, and is a work containing many examples of the terrible sublime.

The sonnets and Canzoni of Petrarch, who lived half a century after Dante, are highly tender and pathetic, though vitiated with a quaintness and conceit, which is a prevalent feature of the Italian poetry. The Decameron of Boccaccio, a work in prose of the same age, is a masterpiece for invention, ingenious narrative, and acquaintance with human nature. These authors have fixed the standard of the Italian language. The original unimproved Provençal style of poetry, as it had little of real genius or merit to recommend it, was almost forgotten in the fourteenth century.

Contemporary with Petrarch and Boccaccio, and

of rival merit, was the English Chaucer, who displays all the talents of the latter, through the medium of excellent poetry. The works of Chaucer discover an extensive knowledge of the sciences, an acquaintance both with ancient and modern learning, particularly the literature of France and Italy, and, above all, a most acute discernment of life and manners. He had visited many parts of the Continent, particularly Italy, and was personally acquainted with Petrarch, and, in all likelihood, with Boccaccio. Of similar character are the poems of Gower, the master of Chaucer, as he calls himself, but of a graver cast, and a more chastened morality. Chaucer has characterized him as the "moral Gower:" his great work, the Confessio Amantis, contained nearly 35,000 lines, and is said to have been written by the desire of King Richard II. between the years 1377 and 1393. Equal to these eminent men, in every species of literary merit, was the accomplished James I. of Scotland, of which his remaining writings bear convincing testimony. Spain, at this period, began to emerge from ignorance and barbarism, and to produce a few of those works which are enumerated with approbation in the whimsical but judicious criticism of Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha. The romance of the Cid, the hero of the Spaniards, was more ancient than the Divina Commedia of Dante, by as much as one hundred and fifty years.

But although poetry attained in those ages a considerable degree of splendor, there was but little advancement in general literature and science. History was disgraced by the intermixture of miracle and fable; though we find much curious information in the writings of Matthew of Westminster, of Walsingham, Everard, Duysburg, and the Chronicles of Froissart and Monstrelet. Philip de Commines happily describes the reign of Louis XI. and Charles VIII. of France. Villani and Platina are valuable recorders of the affairs of Italy.

A taste for classical learning in the fifteenth century led to the discovery of many of the ancient authors. Poggio discovered the writings of Quin

tilian, and several of the compositions of Cicero, which stimulated to further research, and the recovery of many valuable remains of Greek and Roman literature. But this taste was not generally diffused. France and England were extremely barbarous. The library at Oxford only contained six hundred volumes, and there were but four classics in the Royal Library at Paris.

But a brighter period was approaching. The dispersion of the Greeks, on the fall of the Eastern empire, toward the middle of the fifteenth century, diffused a taste for polite literature over all the west of Europe. A succession of popes, endowed with a liberal and enlightened spirit, gave every encouragement to learning and the sciences; and, above all, the noble discovery of the Art of Printing, by moveable types, contributed to their rapid advancement and dissemination, and afforded a certain assurance of the perpetuation of every valuable art, and the progressive improvement of human knowledge. A Psalter, printed in Mentz in the year 1457, is the first book which appears to have been printed with a certain date.

The rise of dramatic composition among the moderns is to be traced to the, however pious, very ridiculous representations, in the churches, of the Scripture histories, called in England, Mysteries, Miracles, and Moralities. These were first exhibited in the twelfth century, as has been before shown, and continued to the sixteenth, when in England they were prohibited by law. Of these we have amusing specimens in Warton's History of English Poetry. Profane dramas were substituted in their place; and a mixture of the sacred and profane appear to have been known in France as early as 1300. In Spain, and in the Tyrol, the Mysteries keep their ground to the present day-ecce the Passion Play at Ober Ammergau, witnessed by the compiler in 1880-nor was it till the end of the sixteenth century that any regular composition for the stage was known in that country. The Italians are allowed by their own writers to have borrowed their theatre from the French and English.

URING the early stages of the historic period, even legend is supposed to have been silent with respect to the country or region now known as Russia, always excepting certain traditions anent a few of the Scythian tribes inhabiting the shores of the Euxine.

The dominion of the majestic people of Rome never stretched to the north of Europe and Asia. Those chill and desert regions remained unpenetrated by the ancients, who, enjoying the blessings of a warm sun, were little tempted to extend their sway too far into the frigid north, which remained enveloped in mystery to them. They regarded it with superstitious dread, believing it to be the seat of the ancient magi; they entertained a vague idea that vast mineral treasures were to be found there, but to seek to take possession of these,-which they believed to be guarded by griffins, giants, and monsters of every kind,-was an idea remote from their thoughts. Hence the eagles of the Cæsars never were carried thither.

Some of the legends respecting the voyages of Jason and the Odysseus may have been rehashes of actual voyages up Scythian rivers. The Scythian nations of his time are minutely described by Herodotus, who also descants upon the great rivers that flow into the Euxine, especially of the Borysthenes. But the fortunes of the regions and peoples mentioned by Herodotus changed again and again. The empire of Cyrus and Darius had been swallowed up by that of Alexander. The successors of Alexander were subjugated by the Romans.

"The tribes of Scythia had been driven back by fresh hordes from the central and eastern parts of Asia, and as successive waves of barbarians followed,

tide by tide, the bulwarks of the Roman empire had, in their turn, been swept away. But it is asserted by Russian historians that the Sclavonic commercial communities rising in the north-western corner of Europe grew and expanded unchecked by these revolutions, and that the origin of their institutions was isolated and autochthonic. They had not been influenced by Greek manners or culture, nor had the tramp of the Roman legions ever sounded amidst the vast forests which environed them. The Goths, the Huns, the Alans, the Bulgars, and the Avars had swept on their destructive courses through the plains central and eastern of the present Russia, but they had left untouched, amidst the forests and marshes of Volkonsk, the cradle of the Russian national existence, in which a new type of civilization was slowly and securely being nursed. This distinctive existence is in its origin intimately connected with the commercial Republic of Novgorod the Great."

The date of the foundation of the city of Novgorod is uncertain. Kieff dates from A.D. 430, when Novgorod and Smolensk were important cities. One hundred years later, A.D. 592, Russian history takes hold on Novgorod. Emperor Mervin, who ruled on the throne of Constantine, marched with a large army against Baian, the khan of the Avars. At Heraclea it is stated that he met with "three men of gigantic stature, who, upon being questioned, replied, in the Sclavonic tongue, that they were ambassadors from a remote nation, dwelling near the shores of the Western Ocean, and that they were sent by their chiefs to visit the formidable Baian, and to excuse themselves from sending a contingent to his armies. They carried no arms, but each had a cithara (a kind of guitar) suspended from his neck, and they explained that their nation

were entirely strangers to wars, tumults, and seditions, and that they occupied themselves in peaceful intercouse as intermediaries between the various peoples."

In 862 Novgorod, then closely allied to Kieff and Smolensk, was torn by factions, and Gostomysl, one of its leading magistrates, on his death-bed exhorted the citizens to tender the princely power to the Norse or Varangian chieftain Rurik. Rurik was sent a message to the effect, "Our country is rich and immense, but order is not established amongst us. Come and reign over us." Rurik did not hesitate, and with his horde bounded into the territory of Novgorod, and from that day to the present writing the fortunes of Russia have been indissolubly wound up with those of the house of Rurik.

Rurik died in 879, leaving his son Igor, four years old, to the charge of his brother-in-law Oleg. Kieff now became the seat of government. Oleg battered at the gates of Constantinople at the head of 80,000 men, 907, and having obtained excellent terms from the emperors Leo and Alexander, nailed to the Galatz Gate the shield of Igor.

Igor, in 913, assumed the reins of government. In 945 he was slain during a campaign, leaving an infant son Sviatoslaw, under the regency of its mother Olga. This lady was said to be a descendant of Gostomysl, at whose invitation Rurik came to Novgorod. She was beautiful, clever, shrewd, and accomplished. She resolved to avenge her husband Igor, who had fallen to the spear of a Drevlien. She attacked the Drevliens in Korostene, their capital, and finding that she made no progress in reducing it, had recourse to stratagem. She declared herself tired of the undertaking, and announced her desire of withdrawing with her army provided the Drevliens would acknowledge their allegiance by sending three pigeons and three sparrows for every roof in the town. The besieged citizens were only too glad to accede to such velvet terms, and instantly collected the birds from the roof of each house, and carefully forwarded them to the wily Olga. This astute lady, in "the dead watches of the night," having caused tow to be attached to the tails of the birds, fired the tow, and set the birds loose. Back flew the feathered tribute to their nests in the house-roofs, a general conflagration followed, and during the crisis the city was stormed, Olga causing the extermination of the

greater portion of its inhabitants. In 952 Olga visited Constantinople, and was received into the Christian faith with great pomp and circumstance by the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus, who stood sponsor. On her return she endeavored to introduce Christianity into the Novgorodians, but without success, her son, to whom she had yielded the government, holding out against her. After her death Sviatoslaw persecuted the Christians. He spent his reign warring with the Greek empire, and marched upon Adrianople, threatening Constantinople, after defeating the Bulgarian king. In turn he was defeated, and was killed in 973. Vladimir I. succeeded to the undivided dominions of his father after subjugating his two brothers, Iarapolk and Oleg. Vladimir stands forth most prominently in Russian history, since from being the most stalwart patron of Paganism, erecting at Kieff a superb statue to the god of thunder, at whose altar human victims were sacificed-and maintaining a harem, almost equal to that of Selomon's, he became Saint Vladimir, the introducer of Christianity. "His strong common sense, strengthened by the reports of what was taking place in more civilized states than his own, revolted against the gross and barbarous superstitions of his nation." Accordingly he sent agents to foreign nations to inquire into the merits of the various creeds which claimed to be based upon the revelation of the will of the God of gods. The belief of the Mussulmans and of the Jews, and the Christian faith, as exemplified at Rome and at Byzantium, became objects of searching inquiry to Vladimir, assisted by his great council, or Vetché. Mahometanism was condemned, but not without some lingering regret on the part of the much-married monarch. Judaism was contemptuously rejected, and the choice lay between the Christian systems of Rome and of Constantinople. Probably the monarch feared that the pope might become a rival in authority; on the other hand, the ambassadors had been much struck with the splendid ritual of the Byzantine worship in the cathedral of St. Sophia. The memory of his grandmother turned the scale. "The wise Olga would have surely chosen the best religion," cried the council, and the adoption of the Greek rite was decided upon.

Vladimir next asked for the hand of the Princess Anne, sister to the emperors Basil and Constan