the Saracens prevailed in that part of the world, the
pilgrims had also by the same means an opportunity of profiting from the
improvements of that laborious people; and however little the majority
of these pious travellers might have had such objects in their view,
something useful must unavoidably have stuck to them; a few certainly
saw with more discernment, and rendered their travels serviceable to
their country by importing other things besides miracles and legends.
Thus a communication was opened between this remote island and countries
of which it otherwise could then scarcely have heard mention made; and
pilgrimages thus preserved that intercourse amongst mankind which is now
formed by politics, commerce, and learned curiosity.

It is not wholly unworthy of observation, that Providence, which
strongly appears to have intended the continual intermixture of mankind,
never leaves the human mind destitute of a principle to effect it. This
purpose is sometimes carried on by a sort of migratory instinct,
sometimes by the spirit of conquest; at one time avarice drives men from
their homes, at another they are actuated by a thirst of knowledge;
where none of these causes can operate, the sanctity of particular
places attracts men from the most distant quarters. It was this motive
which sent thousands in those ages to Jerusalem and Rome, and now, in a
full tide, impels half the world annually to Mecca.

By those voyages the seeds of various kinds of knowledge and improvement
were at different times imported into England. They were cultivated in
the leisure and retirement of monasteries; otherwise they could not have
been cultivated at all: for it was altogether necessary to draw certain
men from the general rude and fierce society, and wholly to set a bar
between them and the barbarous life of the rest of the world, in order
to fit them for study and the cultivation of arts and science.
Accordingly, we find everywhere in the first institutions for the
propagation of knowledge amongst any people, that those who followed it
were set apart and secluded from the mass of the community.

[Sidenote: A.D. 682]

The great ecclesiastical chair of this kingdom, for near a century, was
filled by foreigners. They were nominated by the Popes, who were in that
age just or politic enough to appoint persons of a merit in some degree
adequate to that important charge. Through this series of foreign and
learned prelates, continual acces