d'un bel avenir; Guillaume, comme un aventurier de courage qui s'abat sur une belle proie et la dépèce; le pape comme un ambitieux qui ne considère que les avantages temporels que l'Eglise et son chef THIERRY. peuvent tirer de la conquête.

Not a few years before the Normans came, the clergy, though in Edward the Confessor's days, had lost all good literature and religion, scarce able to read and understand their Latin service; he was a miracle to others, who knew his grammar. The monks went clad in fine stuffs, and made no difference what they eat; which, though in itself no fault, yet to their consciences was irreligious. The great men, given to gluttony and dissolute life, made a prey of the common people, abusing their daughters whom they had in service, then turning them off to the stews; the meaner sort, tippling together night and day, spent all they had in drunkenness, attended with other vices which effeminate men's minds. Whence it came to pass, that, carried on with fury and rashness more than any true fortitude or skill of war, they gave to William their conqueror so easy a conquest. Not but that some few of all sorts were much better among them; but such was the generality.—MILTON.

When as the duke of Normandy
With glistening spear and shield,
Had entered into fair England,
And foil'd his foes in field:

On Christmas-day in solemn sort

Then was he crowned here,

By Albert archbishop of York,

With many a noble peer.

Which being done, he changed quite

The customs of this land,

And punisht such as daily sought

His statutes to withstand.

Old Ballad.

The haughty Norman seized at once an isle,
For which, through many a century, in vain
The Roman, Saxon, Dane, had toiled and bled.
Of Gothic nations this the final burst;
And, mixed the genius of these people all,
Their virtues mixed in one exalted stream,
Here the rich tide of English blood grew full.

THOMSON.

THE temporal power of the popes began in the middle of the eighth century, and, in the long time of disorder from the death of Charlemagne until the middle of the tenth century, the power of the popes increased, and their authority in political and other temporal affairs was great. In 962 a revival of the Western Empire came about under the name of the "Holy Roman Empire," the emperors of Germany being also rulers of the West. The popes and the emperors then became involved in protracted contests, which led to a great increase in the power of the Church.

Suffice it to say, that in the middle of the eleventh century Europe once more looked to Rome as the pillar and the ground of the truth ; while Rome herself looked forth on a long chain of stately monasteries, rising like distant bulwarks of her power in every land which owned her spiritual rule. — SIR JAMES STEPHEN.

The emperors asserted that the election of a pope must be ratified by them, and for a time they exercised a controlling influence over the papal appointments. At this

time Hildebrand, one of the most remarkable men of the Middle Ages, rose from the rank of a common monk to the papal throne (1073), under the name of Gregory VII. He wished to establish the superiority of the ecclesiastical over the temporal power, and he succeeded in putting down the power of the emperors.

excuse.

The papacy arose from its humiliation, and soon trampled under foot the princes of the earth. To exalt the papacy was to exalt the Church, to aggrandize religion, to insure to the spirit the victory over the flesh, and to God the conquest of the world. Such were its maxims; in these, ambition found its advantage, and fanaticism its The whole of this new policy is personified in one man, HILDEBRAND. Hildebrand, who has been by turns indiscreetly exalted or unjustly traduced, is the personification of the Roman pontificate in its strength and glory. He is one of those characters in history which include in themselves a new order of things, resembling in this respect Charlemagne, Luther, and Napoleon, in different spheres of action. Leo IX. took notice of this monk as he was going to Cluny, and carried him with him to Rome. From that time Hildebrand was the soul of the papacy, till he himself became pope. He had governed the Church under different pontiffs, before he himself reigned under the name of Gregory VII. One grand idea occupied his comprehensive mind. He desired to establish a visible theocracy, of which the Pope, as the vicar of Christ, should be the head. The recollection of the ancient universal dominion of heathen Rome haunted his imagination and animated his zeal. He wished to restore to Papal Rome what Rome had lost under the emperors. "What Marius and Cæsar," said his flatterers, "could not effect by torrents of blood, you have accomplished by a word."— D'AUBIGNÉ.

Scarcely had he grasped the reins of ecclesiastical government when this carpenter's son developed such a universal genius for ruling as has only since been displayed in the two greatest self-made men of modern history, - Cromwell and Bonaparte. He had the knowledge, the ability, and the will to do everything. He became a reformer of the Church, a statesman, and a conqueror, a demagogue and a diplomatist, all with equal vigor and masterly skill.VON SYBEL.

Gregory, though he had himself waited for the confirmation of the emperor before he was consecrated, resolved to take away the right of investiture claimed by the emperors, - to take from the secular princes the right which they assumed of selling or giving away the sees within their dominions, a practice which then prevailed throughout the Christian world. He caused a decree to be passed by a council at Rome in 1074, anathematizing all persons guilty of simony, and requiring a vow of celibacy before admission to holy orders. Another council in 1075 decreed the excommunication of any king who should bestow on bishops and abbots the ring and crosier, which were the symbols of their office. The Emperor Henry IV. of Germany defied this decree, and, indignant at Gregory's assumption of power in this and other matters, assembled a diet at Worms and deposed him, whereupon the Pope in 1076 solemnly excommunicated Henry, and declared his subjects free from their oath of allegiance. Henry at first prepared to resist this bold act, but the power of the papal dominion had now grown to be so irresistible, together with rebellion of his own subjects, that he was forced to endure a most humiliating penance at the hands of the Pope, who obliged him to stand for three days without the castle of Canossa in the winter time, barefoot, and clad only in a coarse woollen garment. After this humiliation he was absolved.

Black demons hovering o'er his mitred head,
To Cæsar's successor the Pontiff spake:
"Ere I absolve thee, stoop! that on thy neck
Levelled with earth this foot of mine may tread."
Then he who to the altar had been led,

He whose strong arm the Orient could not check,
He who had held the Soldan at his beck,

Stooped, of all glory disinherited,

And even the common dignity of man!

Amazement strikes the crowd; - while many turn

Their eyes away in sorrow, others burn

With scorn, invoking a vindictive ban

From outraged Nature; but the sense of most
In abject sympathy with power is lost.

WORDSWORTH.

The humbled emperor was not finally vanquished, however, and Gregory died in exile in 1085.

Gregory was without doubt one of the most remarkable men of any age. Never, as far as we know, has religious enthusiasm been

united with such far-sighted policy, or spiritual fanaticism with such pronounced talents for government. VON SYBEL.

The papal power continued to increase, and under the successors of Gregory received large accessions, attaining its greatest height in the next century under Innocent III.

The papal hierarchy, in fact, constituted, in the Middle Ages, the main bond among the various European nations, after the decline of the Roman sway; and in this view the Catholic influence ought to be judged, as De Maistre truly remarked, not only by the ostensible good which it produced, but yet more by the imminent evil which it silently obviated, and which, on that account, we can only inadequately appreciate. COMTE.

We never cease to be amazed at the wonderful luck which raised Napoleon from the dust to the throne of the world, as if it were a romance or a fairy story. But if in the history of kings these astonishing changes are extraordinary accidents, they seem quite natural in the history of the popes; they belong to the very essence of Christendom, which does not appeal to the person, but to the spirit; and while the one history is full of ordinary men, who, without the prerogative of their crown, would have sunk into eternal oblivion, the other is rich in great men who, placed in a different sphere, would have been equally worthy of renown. GREGOROVIUS.

Je la vois cette Rome, où d'augustes vieillards,
Héritiers d'un apôtre et vainqueurs des Césars,
Souverains sans armée et conquérants sans guerre,
A leur triple couronne ont asservi la terre.

RACINE.

THE NORMANS IN SICILY AND ITALY.

PERHAPS this is the place to inquire to what may be attributed the astonishing triumphs of the Normans, as well over victorious Saracens as over degenerate Greeks. The chroniclers may have augmented the disproportion of numbers, but, making all due allowance for such exaggerations, the achievements of the Normans still appear almost miraculous, and even their enemies testify that the charge of their