would have been the fate of Europe, but for the monk who
guarded the relics of the saint within the walled burg.

This good work of the Church, in the preservation and even resuscitation
of the municipal institutions of the towns, has been discust so well and
fully by M. Guizot, M. Sismondi, and Sir James Stephen, that I shall say
no more about it, save to recommend you to read what they have written. I
go on to point out to you some other very important facts, which my ideal
sketch exemplifies.

The difference between the Clergy and the Teuton conquerors was more than
a difference of creed, or of civilization. It was an actual difference
of race. They were Romans, to whom the Teuton was a savage, speaking a
different tongue, obeying different laws, his whole theory of the
universe different from the Roman. And he was, moreover, an enemy and a
destroyer. The Teuton was to them as a Hindoo is to us, with the
terrible exception, that the positions were reversed; that the Teuton was
not the conquered, but the conqueror. It is easy for us to feel humanity
and Christian charity toward races which we have mastered. It was not so
easy for the Roman priest to feel them toward a race which had mastered
him. His repugnance to the 'Barbarian' must have been at first intense.
He never would have conquered it; he never would have become the willing
converter of the heathen, had there not been in him the Spirit of God,
and firm belief in a Catholic Church, to which all men of all races ought
alike to belong. This true and glorious idea, the only one which has
ever been or ever will be able to break down the barriers of race, and
the animal antipathy which the natural man has to all who are not of his
own kin: this idea was the sole possession of the Roman clergy; and by it
they conquered, because it was true, and came from God.

But this very difference of race exposed the clergy to great temptations.
They were the only civilized men left, west of Constantinople. They
looked on the Teuton not as a man, but as a child; to be ruled; to be
petted when he did right, punished when he did wrong; and too often
cajoled into doing right, and avoiding wrong. Craft became more and more
their usual weapon. There were great excuses for them. Their lives and
property were in continual danger. Craft is the natural weapon of the
weak against the strong. It seemed to them, too often, to be not only
natural, but spiritual also, and the