then possible, and he cultivated
them on his own account and for his own pleasure, as a sort of conquest.
It has been doubted whether he could write, and an expression of
Eginhard's might authorize such a doubt; but, according to other
evidence, and even according to the passage in Eginhard, one is inclined
to believe merely that Charlemagne strove painfully, and without much
success, to write a good hand. He had learned Latin, and he understood
Greek. He caused to be commenced, and, perhaps, himself commenced the
drawing up of the first Germanic grammar. He ordered that the old
barbaric poems, in which the deeds and wars of the ancient kings were
celebrated, should be collected for posterity. He gave Germanic names to
the twelve months of the year. He distinguished the winds by twelve
special terms, whereas before his time they had but four designations.
He paid great attention to astronomy. Being troubled one day at no
longer seeing in the firmament one of the known planets, he wrote to
Alcuin: "What thinkest thou of this _Mars_, which, last year, being
concealed in the sign of Cancer, was intercepted from the sight of men
by the light of the sun? Is it the regular course of his revolution? Is
it the influence of the sun? Is it a miracle? Could he have been two
years about performing the course of a single one?"

In theological studies and discussions he exhibited a particular and
grave interest. "It is to him," say Ampere and Haureau, "that we must
refer the honor of the decision taken in 794 by the council of Frankfort
in the great dispute about images; a temperate decision which is as far
removed from the infatuation of the image-worshippers as from the frenzy
of the image-breakers." And at the same time that he thus took part in
the great ecclesiastical questions, Charlemagne paid zealous attention
to the instruction of the clergy whose ignorance he deplored. "Ah," said
he one day, "if only I had about me a dozen clerics learned in all the
sciences, as Jerome and Augustin were!" With all his puissance it was
not in his power to make Jeromes and Augustins; but he laid the
foundation, in the cathedral churches and the great monasteries, of
episcopal and cloistral schools for the education of ecclesiastics, and,
carrying his solicitude still further, he recommended to the bishops and
abbots that, in those schools, "they should take care to make no
difference between the sons of serfs and of free men, so that they migh