he invasion of France by Clovis to that
of Naples by Charles VIII. This period, considered as to the state of
society, has been esteemed dark through ignorance, and barbarous through
poverty and want of refinement. And although this character is much less
applicable to the last two centuries of the period than to those which
preceded its commencement, yet we cannot expect to feel, in respect of
ages at best imperfectly civilized and slowly progressive, that interest
which attends a more perfect development of human capacities, and more
brilliant advances in improvement. The first moiety indeed of these ten
ages is almost absolutely barren, and presents little but a catalogue of
evils. The subversion of the Roman empire, and devastation of its
provinces, by barbarous nations, either immediately preceded, or were
coincident with the commencement of the middle period. We begin in
darkness and calamity; and though the shadows grow fainter as we
advance, yet we are to break off our pursuit as the morning breathes
upon us, and the twilight reddens into the lustre of day.

[Sidenote: Decline of learning in Roman empire.]

No circumstance is so prominent on the first survey of society during
the earlier centuries of this period as the depth of ignorance in which
it was immersed; and as from this, more than any single cause, the moral
and social evils which those ages experienced appear to have been
derived and perpetuated, it deserves to occupy the first place in the
arrangement of our present subject. We must not altogether ascribe the
ruin of literature to the barbarian destroyers of the Roman empire. So
gradual, and, apparently, so irretrievable a decay had long before
spread over all liberal studies, that it is impossible to pronounce
whether they would not have been almost equally extinguished if the
august throne of the Caesars had been left to moulder by its intrinsic
weakness. Under the paternal sovereignty of Marcus Aurelius the
approaching declension of learning might be scarcely perceptible to an
incurious observer. There was much indeed to distinguish his times from
those of Augustus; much lost in originality of genius, in correctness of
taste, in the masterly conception and consummate finish of art, in
purity of the Latin, and even of the Greek language. But there were men
who made the age famous, grave lawyers, judicious historians, wise
philosophers; the name of learning was honourable, its professors were
encou