This is the hopeless century. Manhood, patriotism, Christianity itself, are all at the lowest ebb. But let us turn to the next, and see how good is worked out of evil, and acknowledge, as in so many instances the historian is obliged to do, that man can form no estimate of the future from the plainest present appearances, but that all things are in the hands of a higher intelligence than ours.
ALCUIN, (735-804,) BEDE, (674-735,) EGBERT, CLEMENS, DUNGAL, ACCA, JOHN DAMASCANUS.
TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPES--THE EMPIRE OF CHARLEMAGNE.
This is indeed a great century, which has Pepin of Heristhal at its commencement and Charlemagne at its end. In this period we shall see the course of the dissolution of manners and government arrested throughout the greater part of Europe, and a new form given to its ruling powers. We must remember that up to this time the progress of what we now call civilization was very slow; or we may perhaps almost say that the extent of civilized territory was smaller than it had been at the final breaking up of the Roman Empire four hundred years before. England had lost the elevating influences which the residence of Roman generals and the presence of disciplined forces had spread from the seats of their government. Every occupied position had been a centre of life and learning; and we see still, from the discoveries which the antiquaries of the present day are continually making, that the dwellings of the Prætors and military commanders were constructed in a style of luxury and refinement which argues a high state of culture and art. All round the circumference of the Romanized portion of Britain these head-quarters of order and improvement were fixed; outside of it lay the obscure and tumultuous populations of Wales and Scotland; and if we trace the situations of the towns with terminations derived from _castra_, (a camp,) we shall see, by stretching a line from Winchester in the south to Ilchester, thence up to Gloucester, Worcester, Wroxeter, and Chester, how carefully the Western Gael were prevented from ravaging the peaceful and orderly inhabitants; and, as the same precautions were taken to the North against the Picts and Scots, we shall easily be able to estimate the effect of those numerous schools of life and manners on the country-districts in which they were placed. All these establishments had been removed. Barbarism had reasserted her ancient reign; and at the century we have now reached, the institution which alone could compete in its elevating effect with the old imperial subordination, the Christian Church, had not yet established its authority except for the benefit of ambitious bishops; and the same anarchy reigned in the ecclesiastical body as in the civil orders. The eight or nine kingdoms spread over the land were sufficiently powerful in their separate nationalities to prevent any unity of feeling among the subjects of the different crowns. A prelate of the court of Deiria had no point of union with a prelate protected by the kings of Wessex. And it was this very incapacity of combination at home, from the multiplicity of kings, which led to the astonishing spectacle in this century of the efforts of the Anglo-Saxon clergy in behalf of the Bishop of Rome in distant countries. In this great struggle to extend the power of the Popes, the regular orders particularly distinguished themselves. The fact of submitting to convent-rules, of giving up the stormy pleasures of independence for the safe placidity of unreasoning obedience, is a proof of the desire in many human minds of having something to which they can look up, something to obey, in obeying which their self-respect may be preserved, even in the act of offering up their self-will--a desire which, in civil actions and the atmosphere of a court, leads to slavery and every vice, but in a monastery conducts to the noblest sacrifices, and fills the pages of history with saints and martyrs. The Anglo-Saxon, looking out of his convent, saw nothing round him which could give him hope or comfort. Laws were unsettled, the various little principalities were either hostile or unconnected, there was no great combining authority from which orders could be issued with the certainty of being obeyed; and even the clergy, thinly scattered, and dependent on the capricious favour or exposed to the ignorant animosity of their respective sovereigns, were torn into factions, and practically without a chief. But theoretically there was the noblest chiefship that ever was dreamed of by ambition. The lowly heritage of Peter had expanded into the universal government of the Church.