e la
France avant le douzieme siecle (3 vols. Paris, 1840). No one will
accuse this intelligent writer of unduly depreciating the ages which he
thus brings before us; and by the perusal of his volumes, to which
Heeren and Eichhorn may be added for Germany, we may obtain a clear and
correct outline, which, considering the shortness of life compared with
the importance of exact knowledge on such a subject, will suffice for
the great majority of readers. I by no means, however, would exclude the
Letters on the Dark Ages, as a spirited pleading for those who have
often been condemned unheard.

I shall conclude by remarking that one is a little tempted to inquire
why so much anxiety is felt by the advocates of the mediaeval church to
rescue her from the charge of ignorance. For this ignorance she was not,
generally speaking, to be blamed. It was no crime of the clergy that the
Huns burned their churches, or the Normans pillaged their monasteries.
It was not by their means that the Saracens shut up the supply of
papyrus, and that sheep-skins bore a great price. Europe was altogether
decayed in intellectual character, partly in consequence of the
barbarian incursions, partly of other sinister influences acting long
before. We certainly owe to the church every spark of learning which
then glimmered, and which she preserved through that darkness to
re-kindle the light of a happier age--Sperma puros sozousa. Meantime,
what better apology than this ignorance can be made by Protestants, and
I presume Dr. Maitland is not among those who abjure the name, for the
corruption, the superstition, the tendency to usurpation, which they at
least must impute to the church of the dark ages? Not that in these
respects it was worse than in a less obscure period; for the reverse is
true; but the fabric of popery was raised upon its foundations before
the eleventh century, though not displayed in its full proportions till
afterwards. And there was so much of lying legend, so much of fraud in
the acquisition of property, that ecclesiastical historians have not
been loth to acknowledge the general ignorance as a sort of excuse.
[1848.]

NOTE II. Page 350.

The account of domestic architecture given in the text is very
superficial; but the subject still remains, comparatively with other
portions of mediaeval antiquity, but imperfectly treated. The best sketch
that has hitherto been given is in an article with this title in the
Glossary of Anci