were needed in order to produce a Shakespeare, it is not strange that, in declining ages, four generations should pass away before a GREGORY should come to the chair of Leo, and like him, obtain from contemporaries and from posterity the agnomen of "the Great." Still his greatness was not, like Leo's, in the gift of speech. Each of the rude tribes of Europe had now a dialect of its own, and oratory must be a thing of local power and provincial character. Bernard will be great at Clairvaux, Peter the Hermit at Liege, Philip of Neri at Rome, and Savonarola at Florence. One and all will turn back for their model and oratorical inspiration to Ambrose and Augustine, to Hilary and Leo, as these in turn must have received their impetus in no small degree from the Greek fathers before them, Athanasius and Basil, the two Gregories and Chrysostom, and these again from the old Athenian orators.

Taken all together this period was one of oratorical power to which there has been but one parallel-in that fourth century, B. C., when Antiphon, Gorgias, and Lysias, Isæus, Isocrates and Demosthenes made Attica. a synonym for eloquence. But there was a difference between the two periods in their respective motive and purpose which is symbolized by the legend of the Cypriote king who carved for himself a statue of marvelous perfection, but valuable, chiefly, as a wondrous interpretation of the laws of form. It was when he prayed that the ivory might become animate that there came into the matchless harmony of proportion movement and understanding and trust and faith and love and devotion. So into the chaste eloquence of the Hellenic

age was breathed the spirit of a new and higher life, in an age of sacred oratory, moving men to a loftier understanding, a profounder faith, a sincerer trust, a nobler devotion, and a surer hope of immortality.

THE

XIII.

MEDIEVAL PREACHERS.

HE age of patristic eloquence ends with the death of Leo the Great, A. D. 461. The fourscore years between him and Gregory, A. D. 540, are noted for writers rather than for orators. Vincent of Lerins, Prosper of Aquitaine, Boëthius, and Cassiodorus compose treatises on the Scriptures, canon law, philosophy, and traditions of the saints. A century later Isidore becomes a chronicler, and Ildefonse writes of illustrious men in the West, while John of Damascus concentrates the expiring energies of Greek theology in the East, about A. D. 700. Monasticism absorbs the great body of ecclesiastics, and the ritual of the service receives more attention than preaching. What there is of this becomes theatrical and finally falls into neglect, and therefore into disrepute.

The Middle Ages begin at the middle of the eighth century with the rise and growth of a new Roman empire in the West, Franco-German, in alliance with the papacy, which now exalts its claims to universal obedience and enters into contests with princes. The great men of the time for a hundred years are compilers and chroniclers, jotting down [records of councils, papal appointments, and wars. Under Charlemagne schools begin to be established teaching the famous Trivium and

Quadrivium-grammar, dialectics, rhetoric; music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, A. D. 750. Rabanus, poet-laureate, writes a commentary; Ratramn, Concerning Predestination; also Hincmar and John Scotus; while Alfred the Great translates the Psalms and Gregory's Pastoral into Saxon, A. D. 880.

When oratory is sought for in these ages of oppression and superstition it will be found in the pulpit if at all. Early in the seventh century the voice of one Paulinus was heard in the wilderness above the mumbling controversies about image worship and scholastic subtleties. The chroniclers of the time declare that there were few such preachers as this archbishop of York, who could convert a whole township by a single sermon. Tall of stature, of reverend and majestic mien, with the look of a scholar, he was chosen to expound the doctrines of Christianity before the king and the chief of the Druid priests. He did this so effectively that the Druid called for a spear and a horse, and charged at the door of a temple where his idols were, and commanded his followers to finish the work of destruction which he had begun. This brief chronicle, coming out of the darkness of Northumbrian paganism before the year 650, shows that the power of the spoken Word was still prevailing here and there.

A clearer record comes to us in the literary remains of the VENERABLE BEDE, monk of Wearmouth and Jarrow on the Tyne, A. D. 672. He is the historian of England down to the eighth century, a man of varied attainments, pursuing a life of study in the monasteries, which were the colleges of that time. Such a man would

not, of course, be a Chrysostom or an Ambrose, dealing with sinners in corrupt cities. His was rather the oratory which corresponds to that of an Oxford or Cambridge university - preacher, dealing with theological themes for the defence and confirmation of the faith. Forty-seven of his sermons are on the course of the ecclesiastical year, setting forth objective truths in the order of the calendar, in a scholarly and practical way. Twenty-two belong to the Lenten season, and fortyeight were delivered on days commemorating the saintly characters who have been eminent enough to be canonized in the good opinion of succeeding ages. Twenty more of a different character are manifestly intended for country congregations. It was in the darkest period of letters that this man became the embodiment of what learning survived the decay of Roman literature. And if as an orator he cannot be ranked with the great preachers of the fourth century, he certainly kept alive the spark of eloquence until better conditions for it appeared.

It is a remarkable fact that in the general dearth of mental activity in the East, Britain, in the remotest West, should become the home of learning, such as it was. Grammar, philosophy, and theology were cultivated in England, and particularly in Ireland, when much of the continent of Europe was in the shadow of an intellectual eclipse. The great religious houses did an inestimable service to learning in the multiplication of manuscripts, not only of the Scriptures but also of the classic authors of antiquity. And this at a time when the destruction of that great treasure-house of antiquity, the Alexandrian