legislation, might recall the peaceful days of the Antonines. The empire, at least at first, was restored to religious unity; Catholicism resumed its sway, and Arianism, so long its rival, died out in remote and neglected congregations. MILMAN.

The history of the Greek Empire [after the time of Justinian] for it is thus that the Roman Empire is named for the future is nothing but a tissue of revolts, seditions, and perfidies. — MON

TESQUIEU.

If Rome had been the home of independence, Constantinople was the home of slavery; from thence issued the dogmas of passive obedience to the Church and throne: there was but one right, — that of the empire; but one duty, that of obedience. — THIERRY.

Cæsar I was, and am Justinian,

Who, by the will of primal Love I feel,

Took from the laws the useless and redundant;

And ere unto the work I was attent,

One nature to exist in Christ, not more,

Believed, and with such faith was I contented.

DANTE, Paradiso. Tr. Longfellow.

For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
Piloting the great fleet,

I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
Like dust in a windy street.

For him I won again

The Ausonian realm and reign,

Rome and Parthenope;

And all the land was mine

From the summits of Apennine

To the shores of either sea.

LONGFELLOW, Belisarius.

THE LOMBARDS IN ITALY.

THE years immediately following the death of Justinian were marked by the irruption of the Lombards into Italy, who overran the greater part of the peninsula. Rome, how

ever, with several other cities, and the islands of Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia, still adhered to the empire.

Amidst the arms of the Lombards, and under the despotism of the Greeks, we again inquire into the fate of Rome, which had reached, about the close of the sixth century, the lowest period of her depression. By the removal of the seat of empire, and the successive loss of the provinces, the sources of public and private opulence were exhausted; the lofty tree, under whose shade the nations of the earth had reposed, was deprived of its leaves and branches, and the sapless trunk was left to wither on the ground. — GIBBON.

IMMEDIATE RESULTS OF THE MIGRATION OF THE NATIONS.

THE Consequences, as seen in this century, of the migrations of the northern nations, which resulted in the fall of Rome in the last century, are thus noticed by the historian Robertson:

In less than a century after the barbarous nations settled in their new conquests, almost all the effects of the knowledge and civility which the Romans had spread through Europe disappeared. Not only the arts of elegance, which minister to luxury, and are supported by it, but many of the useful arts, without which life can scarcely be considered as comfortable, were neglected or lost. . . . But no expressions can convey so perfect an idea of the destructive progress of the barbarians as that which must strike an attentive observer when he contemplates the total change which he will discover in the state of Europe, after it began to recover some degree of tranquillity, towards the close of the sixth century. The Saxons were by that time masters of the southern and more fertile provinces of Britain; the Franks, of Gaul; the Huns, of Pannonia; the Goths, of Spain; the Goths and Lombards, of Italy and the adjacent provinces. Very faint vestiges of the Roman policy, jurisprudence, arts, or literature remained. New forms of government, new laws, new manners, new dresses, new languages, and new names of men and countries, were everywhere introduced.

THE RISE OF MONACHISM.

I like a church; I like a cowl;

I love a prophet of the soul;

And on my heart monastic aisles

Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles;
Yet not for all his faith can see

Would I that couléd churchman be.

EMERSON.

THE monastic system had its origin in the East, and was brought into Western Europe during the early times of the Christian Church, but did not reach a stage of extended usefulness till the sixth century, under St. Benedict, who is regarded as the founder of the monastic system in the West. He founded a monastery at Monte-Casino, near Naples, about 529, and from him dates the distinguished order of the Benedictines. The rule of his order comprised, besides religious duties, various kinds of manual labor (including especially agriculture), instruction of the young, and the copying of valuable manuscripts.

The monasteries, scattered all over Europe, formed the most valuable aids of the Church, and were a sort of connecting link during the Dark Ages between the old civilization and that which was to come, and to them is due the preservation of what remains to us of ancient literature. During this period, to use the words of a distinguished French author, "all those men who, if they did not augment the treasure of the sciences, at least served to transmit it, were monks, or had been such originally. Convents were, during these stormy ages, the asylum of sciences and letters. Without these religious men, who, in the silence of their monasteries, occupied themselves in transcribing, in studying, and in imitating the works of the ancients, well or ill, those works would have perished; perhaps not one

of them would have come down to us. The thread which connects us with the Greeks and Romans would have been snapt asunder; the precious productions of ancient literature would no more exist for us, than the works, if any there were, published before the catastrophe that annihilated that highly scientific nation which, according to Bailly, existed in remote ages in the centre of Tartary or at the roots of the Caucasus. In the sciences we should have had all to create; and at the moment when the human mind should have emerged from its stupor and shaken off its slumbers, we should have been no more advanced than the Greeks were after the taking of Troy."

During about three centuries, and while Europe had sunk into the most extreme moral, intellectual, and political degradation, a constant stream of missionaries poured forth from the monasteries, who spread the knowledge of the Cross and the seeds of a future civilization through every land from Lombardy to Sweden. LECKY.

You are all aware it was in the East that the monks took their rise. The form in which they first appeared was very different from that which they afterwards assumed, and in which the mind is accustomed to view them. In the earlier years of Christianity a few men of more excitable imaginations than their fellows imposed upon themselves all sorts of sacrifices and of extraordinary personal austerities; this, however, was no Christian innovation, for we find it, not in a general tendency of human nature, but in the religious manners of the entire East and in several Jewish traditions. The ascetes (this was the name first given to these pious enthusiasts; aσknois, exercises, ascetic life) were the first form of monks. They did not segregate, in the first instance, from civil society; they did not retire into the deserts; they only condemned themselves to fasting, silence, to all sorts of austerities, more especially to celibacy. Soon afterwards they retired from the world; they went to live far from mankind, absolutely alone, amidst woods and deserts, in the depths of the Thebaïd. The ascetes became hermits, anchorites; this was the second form of the monastic life. After some time, from causes which have left no traces behind them-yielding, perhaps, to the powerful attraction of some more

peculiarly celebrated hermit, of St. Anthony for instance, or perhaps simply tired of complete isolation, the anchorites collected together, built their huts side by side, and while continuing to live each in his own abode, performed their religious exercises together, and began to form a regular community. It was at this time, as it would seem, that they first received the name of monks. By and by they made a further step; instead of remaining in separate huts, they collected in one edifice, under one roof; the association was more closely knit, the common life more complete. They became cenobites (cenobitæ, κowoßiol, from Kolos, common, and Bios, life); this was the fourth form of the monastic institution, its definitive form, that to which all its subsequent developments were to adapt themselves. - GUIZOT.

In general, if a district in England be surveyed, the most convenient, most fertile, and most peaceful spot will be found to have been the site of a Benedictine Abbey. MILMAN.

Record we too, with just and faithful pen,

That many hooded cenobites there are,
Who in their private cells have yet a care
Of public quiet; unambitious men,
Counsellors for the world, of piercing ken;
Whose fervent exhortations from afar
Move princes to their duty, peace or war;
And ofttimes in the most forbidding den
Of solitude, with love of science strong,
How patiently the yoke of thought they bear!
How subtly glide its finest threads along!
Spirits that crowd the intellectual sphere
With mazy boundaries, as the astronomer
With orb and cycle girds the starry throng.

And they who to be sure of paradise
Dying put on the weeds of Dominic,
Or in Franciscan think to pass disguised.

WORDSWORTH.

MILTON.