ened academy of civil law, from which the latter jurists derived
their lessons. The laws of Justinian, stripped of their impurer alloy,
and of the tedious glosses of their commentators, will form the basis of
other systems, and mingling, as we may hope, with the new institutions
of philosophical legislators, continue to influence the social relations
of mankind, long after their direct authority shall have been abrogated.
The ruins of ancient Rome supplied the materials of a new city; and the
fragments of her law, which have already been wrought into the recent
codes of France and Prussia, will probably, under other names, guide far
distant generations by the sagacity of Modestinus and Ulpian.[810]

[Sidenote: Public schools established by Charlemagne.]

The establishment of public schools in France is owing to Charlemagne.
At his accession, we are assured that no means of obtaining a learned
education existed in his dominions;[811] and in order to restore in some
degree the spirit of letters, he was compelled to invite strangers from
countries where learning was not so thoroughly extinguished. Alcuin of
England, Clement of Ireland, Theodulf of Germany, were the true Paladins
who repaired to his court. With the help of these he revived a few
sparks of diligence, and established schools in different cities of his
empire; nor was he ashamed to be the disciple of that in his own palace
under the care of Alcuin.[812] His two next successors, Louis the
Debonair and Charles the Bald, were also encouragers of letters; and
the schools of Lyons, Fulda, Corvey, Rheims, and some other cities,
might be said to flourish in the ninth century.[813] In these were
taught the trivium and quadrivium, a long-established division of
sciences: the first comprehending grammar, or what we now call
philology, logic, and rhetoric; the second, music, arithmetic, geometry,
and astronomy.[814] But in those ages scarcely anybody mastered the
latter four; and to be perfect in the three former was exceedingly rare.
All those studies, however, were referred to theology, and that in the
narrowest manner; music, for example, being reduced to church chanting,
and astronomy to the calculation of Easter.[815] Alcuin was, in his old
age, against reading the poets;[816] and this discouragement of secular
learning was very general; though some, as for instance Raban, permitted
a slight tincture of it, as subsidiary to religious instruction.[817]

[Sidenote: U