il spirits.

[Sidenote: 800-911.]

Vernacular poetry, and vernacular composition, of every kind, were
almost wholly left to the vulgar; all, who aimed at literary eminence,
wrote in the Latin language. Some discerning spirits became sensible
that the German language was susceptible of great improvement, and
excited their countrymen to its cultivation. Among these was Otfroid; he
translated the Gospel into German verse. He describes, in strong terms,
the difficulties which he had to encounter: "The barbarousness of the
German language is," he says, "so great, and its sounds are so
incoherent and strange, that it is very difficult to subject them to the
rules of grammar, to represent them by syllables, or to find in the
alphabet letters which correspond to them." It is however remarkable,
that, although he complains of the dissonance of the German language, he
never accuses it of poverty.

While France and Germany continued subject to the same monarch, German
was the language of the court, and generally used in every class of
society. When the treaty of Verdun divided the territories of
Charlemagne, the _Romande_, or _Romance_ language, a corruption of the
Latin, superseded the German in every part of France: it was insensibly
refined into the modern French, but the German continued to be the only
language spoken in Germany.

Great progress was made in architecture: the churches and palaces
constructed by the direction of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, the
Basilisc at Germani, the church of St. Recquier at Ponthieu, and many
other monuments of great architectural skill and expense, belong to the
age of Charlemagne, and bear ample testimony to the well-directed
exertions of the monarch, and of some of his descendants, and to their
wise and splendid magnificence.

I. 3.

_Decline of Literature under the Descendants of Charlemagne._

[Sidenote: 800-911]

[Sidenote: I. 3. Decline of Literature under the Descendants of
Charlemagne.]

That literature began to decline immediately after the decease of
Charlemagne, in every part of his extensive dominions, and that its
decline was principally owing to the wars among his descendants, which
devastated every portion of his empire, seems to be universally
acknowledged; yet there are strong grounds for contending that it was
not so great as generally represented. _Abbe le Beuf_,[003] in an
excellent dissertation on the state of the sciences in the Gauls durin