thing can be recorded, in connexion with the history of literature and science, except the names of a few individuals, who maintained an unequal struggle with the ignorance and barbarism that surrounded them, leaving behind them, in their voluminous writings, the memorials of their patient and persevering, though misapplied, industry in the pursuit of knowledge. The latter half of the period to be reviewed is scarcely less barren, except that some indications may be perceived, as we advance, of the gradual approach of a brighter æra, and of the emancipation of the human mind from the trammels by which it had been long enslaved. As there is little during this protracted period of intellectual darkness on which the mind can dwell with satisfaction, we shall pass over it as rapidly as possible, gleaning, as we proceed, the few scattered facts bearing upon our present object, which the annals of Europe or Asia may present.

195. The same gradation which may be perceived in all the operations of nature, and which scientific men in modern times have designated "the law of continuity," characterizes the history of mind. The transition is not found to be instantaneous from barbarism to refinement, or from refinement to barbarism. The human mind does not pass at once from a high degree of intellectual eminence, like that to which it had attained during the best days of Grecian and Roman history, to an abject state of mental captivity, like that to which it was reduced during the middle ages. The process was gradual, though rapid, by which this melancholy

revolution was effected. The causes were numerous which operated to produce it; and the successive stages of deterioration may be distinctly traced from the reign of the Antonines, (when it may be considered as commencing,) to the rise of the Saracenic empire, when the work of desolation was completed. There were a few men of eminence, both as philosophers and scholars, who flourished during the third and two following centuries. Some of these were mentioned in a former section of this work; men who were characterized more by patient labour and unwearied application, than by inventive and original genius. They were usefully and laboriously employed in compilations from the works of the ancients; but they will bear no comparison in intellectual attainments with the brilliant luminaries of preceding ages. Such were-Ptolemy, the far-famed astronomer; Pappus and Proclus, who commented on the works of Euclid; Ammonius, Porphyry, Aphrodiscus, Ægeus, with many others of the Eclectic sect, who wrote commentaries on the mctaphysics of Plato and Aristotle; not excepting even the Christian fathers, Origen, Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Jerome. These were chiefly connected with the Alexandrian school, which proved the last refuge of declining literature, and where the arts and sciences continued for a time to languish and decay, until at length, like withered plants, they were plucked up and trodden under foot by the Impostor of Mecca and his descendants. 196. It falls not within the limits of the present work, to examine minutely into the causes which

produced this catastrophe; but it is requisite briefly to enumerate a few, out of many, to which it may be distinctly traced. The more immediate and apparent cause to which this melancholy change is to be attributed, was (as has been already intimated) the rise of the Saracenic empire in the East, and the consequent dispersion of the men of science, who still flourished at Alexandria. "All the cultivators of the arts and sciences," says a modern writer, when describing the history of this period, "who had assembled from every nation in Alexandria, were driven away with ignominy. Some fell beneath the sword of the Arabian conquerors; others fled into remote countries, to drag out the residue of their days in want and obscurity. The buildings which had been erected, and the instruments prepared at great expense for the purpose of making astronomical observations, were involved in one common destruction. And at length, to complete the wreck, that precious depository of knowledge, the library of the Ptolemies, which had suffered greatly by fire in the time of Julius Cæsar, was now utterly consumed. The Khalif Omar directed all its books to be burned, because, said he, if they agree with the Khoran, they are useless; if they differ from it, they are pernicious and blasphemous, and, as such, should be held in universal detestation; an argument well worthy of a fanatical robber."

197. But there were also many more remote or collateral causes contributing to the same event,

Bossut's Hist. of Mathem. p. 152.

some of which preceded, and others were contemporary with that alluded to in the preceding paragraph. Such were the disorganized state of society, and general corruption of manners, in the latter periods of Roman history-the prejudices entertained by many of the fathers of the Christian Church against heathen literaturethe progress of superstition--the rise of monastic institutions--the ambition, ignorance, and vices of the clergy-the imprisonment of the works of the ancients in monastic libraries, whence they were seldom permitted to emerge, and where they were disregarded and forgotten-the exclusion of the laity, however exalted their rank and station in society, from the advantages of education, and all other means of intellectual improvement--the disuse of the Latin and Greek languages, as the medium of communication between men of letters---the despotism of a few names, such as those of Aristotle and Augustine, whose works alone were sanctioned by the ecclesiastical rulers. These, with many other cooperating circumstances of a similar kind, are more than sufficient to account for the intellectual darkness that overspread the world, at the period under review.

198. But in this tremendous struggle between civilization and barbarism, between knowledge and ignorance, the former ultimately prevailed. A partial revival of letters, or at least their preservation from total ruin, may be traced to the very people who had threatened their existence, and endeavoured to effect their destruction. After the lapse of about

a century from the rise of the Saracenic empire, a succession of Khalifs arose who patronized learning, and collected at Bagdad, the principal seat of empire, a considerable body of philosophers and mathematicians. The latter were chiefly held in estimation, on account of the intimate connexion which was perceived to exist between the abstract sciences and practical astronomy; a branch of physical knowledge to which the oriental nations had been from the earliest ages passionately devoted, not so much for its own sake, as from a belief that the knowledge of the stars would enable them to prognosticate future events.*

SECTION II.

ARRANGED LIST OF THE PHYSICAL AND INTELLECTUAL PHILOSOPHERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES.

199. In this division of the work, instead of attempting so minute a classification as that adopted in the preceding pages, it will be sufficient to arrange the scanty materials with which we are furnished, under two general heads; the first including the History of Physical Science during the middle ages; and the second, that of Intellectual and Moral Science, for the same period. It may not, however, be unacceptable to the juvenile reader, before entering on this retrospect, to be furnished with a

* Gibbon's Decline and Fall, Vol. V. թ. 423-425.