8

HISTORY OF ENGLAND,

ciw. the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, than that they should,one by one, be overwhelmed by the Mahometan power.Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have been justlythrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, itwas surely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence,there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which thearts of peace could be safely cultivated, in which gentle andcontemplative natures could find an asylum, in which onebrother could employ himself in transcribing the yEneid ofVirgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle,in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate a marty-rology or carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turnfor natural philosophy might make experiments on the pro-perties of plants and minerals. Had not such retreats beenscattered here and there, among the huts of a miserablepeasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy, Eu-ropean society would have consisted merely of beasts ofburden and beasts of prey. The Church has many timesbeen compared by divines to the ark of which we read in theBook of Genesis: but never was the resemblance more per-fect than during that evil time when she alone rode, amidstdarkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all thegreat works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed,bearing within her that feeble germ from which a second andmore glorious civilisation was to spring.

Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was,in the dark ages, productive of far more good than evil.Its effect was to unite the nations of Western Europe in onegreat commonwealth. What the Olympian chariot courseand the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, fromTrebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to allChristians of the Latin communion, from Calabria to theHebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged bene-volence. Races separated from each other by seas and