ding to others, devoted rather to conversation than to
teaching.

It probably fulfilled both missions; it attended Charlemagne at his
various residences, at one time working for him at questions he invited
them to deal with, at another giving to the regular components of his
court, to his children, and to himself lessons in the different sciences
called liberal: grammar, rhetoric, logic, astronomy, geometry, and even
theology, and the great religious problems it was beginning to discuss.
Two men, Alcuin and Eginhard, have remained justly celebrated in the
literary history of the age. Alcuin was the principal director of the
school of the palace, and the favorite, the confidant, the learned
adviser of Charlemagne. "If your zeal were imitated," said he one day to
the Emperor, "perchance one might see arise in France a new Athens, far
more glorious than the ancient--the Athens of Christ."

Eginhard, who was younger, received his scientific education in the
school of the palace, and was head of the public works to Charlemagne,
before becoming his biographer, and, at a later period, the intimate
adviser of his son Louis the Debonair. Other scholars of the school of
the palace, Angilbert, Leidrade, Adalhard, Agobard, Theodulph, were
abbots of St. Riquier or Corbie, archbishops of Lyons, and bishops of
Orleans. They had all assumed, in the school itself, names illustrious
in pagan antiquity: Alcuin called himself _Flaccus_; Angilbert, _Homer_;
Theodulph, _Pindar_. Charlemagne himself had been pleased to take, in
their society, a great name of old, but he had borrowed from the history
of the Hebrews--he called himself _David_; and Eginhard, animated, no
doubt, by the same sentiments, was _Bezaleel_, that nephew of Moses to
whom God had granted the gift of knowing how to work skilfully in wood
and all the materials which served for the construction of the ark and
the tabernacle. Either in the lifetime of their royal patron or after
his death all these scholars became great dignitaries of the Church, or
ended their lives in monasteries of note; but, so long as they lived,
they served Charlemagne or his sons not only with the devotion of
faithful advisers, but also as followers proud of the master who had
known how to do them honor by making use of them.

It was without effort and by natural sympathy that Charlemagne had
inspired them with such sentiments; for he, too, really loved sciences,
literature, and such studies as were