It is gratifying, after having spoken with so much blame of the life of the Duke of Gloucester, which was ruined by ambition and passion, to be able to add a few words of praise. But even his patronage of learning, and his effort to foster a taste for literature, do not entitle him to the appellation of the "good" duke, a designation which he probably owed only to political party-feelings. The weak and evil side of this revived form of literature is, that its disciples should have elevated the morality, or rather the immorality, of classical antiquity above Christian discipline and virtue. In Duke Humphrey's life there was, indeed, no question of morality, and still less of religion. The voice of Wiclif and of his preachers, which had called upon men in the words of the Gospel to renounce the evil of their ways, had been stifled in the flames at the stake; and the Duke, who occasionally also took part in these persecutions against heretics, lived in an age when the high clergy ventured, unchecked and careless of the salvation of their own souls and that of others, to lead a godless and God-forgetting life, and when pontiffs and prelates, and other high dignitaries of the Church, even if they strove to attain to a nobler culture, could only learn to believe and to think, as the old heathens of Athens and Rome had in their day believed and thought. Is it, then, much to be wondered at if, among so many examples, Duke Humphrey should have thought that he might more readily than others attain the power at which he aimed by putting his trust in Plato and Aristotle, or that he should have caused the life of his brother to be written from similar motives, and that even in his nobler aspirations he should not have remained free

from intense vanity? His want of moral retinence finally urged his love of knowledge and his thirst for inquiry into evil and destructive paths; and it would seem as if the results were very nearly analogous to those which we see exemplified in the German knight Ulrich von Hutten, a more trustworthy and a bolder champion of the same mental tendencies.

XII.

LONDON IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

PARIS may justly boast of having been, during the middle ages, a representative of ancient Rome, among the nations which ruled the destinies of the world, and of having been, both in a spiritual, intellectual, and political sense, the metropolis and the central point from whence emanated the streams of public vitality. The powerful impulse and enthusiasm of the Crusades met with the most efficient protection at the court of the French kings. The University of Paris had, moreover, become conspicuous as the first in Western Christendom in respect to all those departments of knowledge which mankind had then mastered; while even in these days the Parisians gave the tone in regard to art, taste, elegance of deportment, and good as well as evil habits, which was at once followed by all nations of Roman and Germanic origin. In regard to magnitude, wealth, and beauty, this city, for a time, undoubtedly far surpassed all others north of the Alps.

In some of these qualifications Paris, however, had very early a rival, who, moreover, was possessed of many other admirable advantages, which enabled her speedily to dispute the supremacy in regard to several points. For if London did not, like Paris, constantly attract the

eyes of the world to herself in the march of political and civil progress, this must rather be referred to her insular position. But it was precisely to this cause that we must attribute many of the enormous advantages which London possessed in other respects. Situated in an island, which nature has endowed with inexhaustible means of self-help, the city rose on the banks of a wide stream, and not too far from its mouth to be entirely deprived of the whole force of the ever-persistent recurrence of the tides. On either side of the stream rise a succession of hills, in gentle undulating lines, along which the river-bed of a former age, many miles in width, may still be traced, which are not of sufficient elevation to place an impassable barrier against the immense increase of this the largest city of the world, and which, on the contrary, have contributed, like the river, both in ancient and in modern times, to influence the character of London. There was scarcely another spot upon the earth which could have constituted a more favourably placed intermediate station of intercommunication, when Northern Europe became incorporated into the universal body of European policy, while it still maintains its rank, although America and the Australasian continent are now added to the rest of the known world.

It is natural that the different races from which the English nation has been developed in the course of ages, should have more or less deeply impressed the mark of their presence on London, which is, in fact, England. Its connexion with the ancient Britons is, indeed, a mere matter of mythical fable; and, according to this tradition, the names London, Caer-lud, and Ludgate

are said to perpetuate the memory of one of these mythical kings, who trace their origin through Brutus to Troy, and even amongst the first known English poets, London is named the new Troy. More modern writers would refer the name to the Welsh, in which it is pretended to signify the city of ships; while they try to recognise in the Tower the ancient seat of a prince of the Trinobantes, and in many very remarkable remains the traces of the presence of the first British population. This much only is certain, from the unquestionable testimony of Tacitus, that the Romans, when they had begun to examine more closely the condition of England, discovered a considerable commercial town on the north side of the Thames, to which many merchants from different countries resorted for purposes of trade. This admirably-placed town was rebuilt by the Romans after a general fire, received a Roman name, and acquired the various establishments and modes of organization, in respect to which the Roman colonies strove to vie with the mother city. There are many places in London where, even at the present day, Roman pavements, ancient mosaic floors, and similar memorials of art, have been discovered fifteen feet below the surface; and not only the hill of St. Paul's, but many other consecrated spots, must have served as a place of burial in heathen as well as in early Christian times, as is proved by the numerous urns that have been excavated at these points. As similar remains have been found on the opposite side of the river, a wide bridge may very likely have connected both shores at the time of the Romans. The old Roman walls which once surrounded the city as in a quadrangle, and its four