ire? Why
did society constantly decline for four hundred years, with that
civilization which was its boast and hope? Oh, ye optimists, who talk so
glibly about the natural and necessary progress of humanity, why was the
Roman Empire swept away, with all its material glories, to give place to
such a state of society as I have just briefly described?

And yet men should arise in due time, after the punishment of five
centuries of crime and violence, wretchedness and despair, to
reconstruct, not from the old Pagan materials of Greece and Rome, but
with the fresh energies of new races, aided and inspired by the truths
of the everlasting gospel. The infancy of the new races, sprung however
from the same old Aryan stock, passed into vigorous youth when
Charlemagne appeared. From him we date the first decided impulse given
to the Gothic civilization. He was the morning star of European hopes
and aspirations.

Let us now turn to his glorious deeds. What were the services he
rendered to Europe and Christian civilization?

It was necessary that a truly great man should arise in the eighth
century, if the new forces of civilization were to be organized. To show
what he did for the new races, and how he did it, is the historian's
duty and task in describing the reign of Charlemagne,--sent, I think, as
Moses was, for a providential mission, in the fulness of time, after the
slaveries of three hundred years, which prepared the people for labor
and industry. Better was it that they should till the lands of allodial
proprietors in misery and sorrow, attacked and pillaged, than to wander
like savages in forests and morasses in quest of a precarious support,
or in great predatory bands, as they did in the fourth and fifth
centuries, when they ravaged the provinces of the falling Empire.
Nothing was wanted but their consolidation under central rule in order
to repel aggressors. And that is what Charlemagne attempted to do.

He soon perceived the greatness of the struggle to which he was
destined, and he did not flinch from the contest which has given him
immortality. He comprehended the difficulties which surrounded him and
the dangers which menaced him.

The great perils which threatened Europe were from unsubdued barbarians,
who sought to replunge it into the miseries which the great irruptions
had inflicted three hundred years before. He therefore bent all the
energies of his mind and all the resources of his kingdom to arrest
th