ay. The mechanical
execution, however, continued to improve, and is so far beyond the
apparent intellectual powers of those times, that some have ascribed the
principal ecclesiastical structures to the fraternity of freemasons,
depositaries of a concealed and traditionary science. There is probably
some ground for this opinion; and the earlier archives of that
mysterious association, if they existed, might illustrate the progress
of Gothic architecture, and perhaps reveal its origin. The remarkable
change into this new style, that was almost contemporaneous in every
part of Europe, cannot be explained by any local circumstances, or the
capricious taste of a single nation.[690]

[Sidenote: Agriculture in some degree progressive.]

It would be a pleasing task to trace with satisfactory exactness the
slow, and almost perhaps insensible progress of agriculture and internal
improvement during the latter period of the middle ages. But no
diligence could recover the unrecorded history of a single village;
though considerable attention has of late been paid to this interesting
subject by those antiquaries, who, though sometimes affecting to despise
the lights of modern philosophy, are unconsciously guided by their
effulgence. I have already adverted to the wretched condition of
agriculture during the prevalence of feudal tenures, as well as before
their general establishment.[691] Yet even in the least civilized ages,
there were not wanting partial encouragements to cultivation, and the
ameliorating principle of human industry struggled against destructive
revolutions and barbarous disorder. The devastation of war from the
fifth to the eleventh century rendered land the least costly of all
gifts, though it must ever be the most truly valuable and permanent.
Many of the grants to monasteries, which strike us as enormous, were of
districts absolutely wasted, which would probably have been reclaimed by
no other means. We owe the agricultural restoration of a great part of
Europe to the monks. They chose, for the sake of retirement, secluded
regions which they cultivated with the labour of their hands.[692]
Several charters are extant, granted to convents, and sometimes to
laymen, of lands which they had recovered from a desert condition, after
the ravages of the Saracens.[693] Some districts were allotted to a body
of Spanish colonists, who emigrated, in the reign of Louis the Debonair,
to live under a Christian sovereign.[694] N