orward. Monastic reform is active; great schools, as at
Chartres, take their rise; there is a preparation for the wonderful
vigour of the next century. The First Crusade brings East and West
together in a new fashion.

_Twelfth Century._--The strength and energy of Europe is now tremendous
in every department, and not least in that with which we are concerned.
Our libraries are crammed to-day with twelfth-century MSS. The
Gregories, Augustines, Jeromes, Anselms, are numbered by the hundred. It
is the age of great Bibles and of "glosses"--single books or groups of
books of the Bible equipped with a marginal and interlinear comment
(very many of which, by the way, seem to have been produced in North
Italy). Immense, too, is the output of the writers of the time; Bernard,
Hugh and Richard of St. Victor, Peter Comestor, Peter Lombard. The two
last are the authors of two of the most popular of medieval
textbooks--Peter Lombard of the _Sentences_ (a body of doctrine), Peter
Comestor of the _Historia Scholastica_ (a manual of Scripture history).
The Cistercian Order, now founding houses everywhere, is, I think,
specially active in filling its libraries with fine but austerely plain
copies of standard works, eschewing figured decoration in its books, as
in its buildings, and caring little for secular learning. The University
of Paris is the centre of intellectual vigour.

_Thirteenth Century._--This is commonly regarded as the greatest of all
in medieval history; and truly, when we think of achievements such as
Westminster, Amiens, and Chartres, and of men such as St. Louis, St.
Thomas Aquinas, St. Francis, Dante, Edward I., Roger Bacon, we must
agree that the popular estimate is sound. Certainly we see in France and
in England the fine flower of art in buildings and in books.

Paris is still the centre. The "Gothic" spirit is concentrated there.
The book trade is enormous. It is passing--under the influence of the
University, most likely--out of the hands of the monastic scribes into
those of the professional "stationers"; while great individual artists,
such as Honore, arise to provide for Royal and noble persons examples of
art which stand as high to-day as when they were first produced.

It is now that we find a large multiplication of textbooks. If the
twelfth century was the age of great Bibles, the thirteenth is the age
of small ones. Thousands of these exist, written with amazing minuteness
and uniformity. Only less