CHAP.

VI.

admits that, “if any of the clergy spoke to the people, you had nothing but what was trite and vulgar, or puerile and silly," p. 810.

France was not then in a better state. It is mentioned by the Monach. Engolism., that “ before Charlemagne there was in Gaul no study of the liberal arts,” though some few of the superior clergy endeavoured to excite the taste. Thus a bishop in 796, in his dona. tion of a church to a priest, directed part of the benefit to be applied “in schola habenda et pueris educandis.” Murat. 811. The patronage of Charlemagne to letters had great effects, but not universal ones; for in 823 Lotharius I., in his capitulary on learning, states, that “ from the neglect and sloth of the governors, it was in all places entirely extinguished (funditus extincta).” To remedy this, he desires that every exertion should be used to give scholars the instruction they needed. And he established schools in eight cities of his kingdom for the reception of those who would resort to them. 66 That all may have the opportunity, we have provided fit places for this exercitium, in order that poverty may be an excuse to no more from the difficulties of distant stations.” Such truly royal benefactions could only do good; yet not very long afterwards, Lupus, the abbot of Ferrara, declares that the study of literature was still almost obsolete in France. Who,” he exclaims, “ does not deservedly complain of the inability of the masters, the penury of books, and the want of sufficient leisure?" Ib. 829. So learning continued in as bad a state in Italy; for the council held at Rome in the year 826 declared that Italy abounds with unlearned presbyters, deacons, and subdeacons, whom therefore the sacred synod for a time has suspended from the divine offices, that learned persons may be made fit to come to the due discharge of their ministry." Ib.

The Anglo-Saxons were therefore not inferior to their neighbours. It will be nearer the truth to say, that from the year 700 to 900 the literary characters whom this work notices to have emerged in England may claim, on the whole, a superiority over the intellectual produce of the Continent during the same period.

CHAP. VII.

The Sciences of the ANGLO-SAXONS.

IX.

BOOK The most enlightened nations of antiquity had

not made much progress in any of the sciences but the mathematical. During the Anglo-Saxon period, the general mind of Europe turned from their cultivation, to other pursuits more necessary and congenial to their new political situation. Happily for mankind, they were attended to during this period more efficiently in the Mahomedan kingdoms. The Arabian mind being completely settled in fertile countries and mild climates, enjoyed all the leisure that was wanted for the cultivation of natural knowlege; its acuteness and activity took this direction, and began preparing that intellectual feast which we are now lavishly enjoying, and perpetually enlarging.

The history of the sciences among the AngloSaxons can contain little more information than that some individuals successively arose, as Aldhelm, Bede, Alcuin, Joannes Scotus, and a few more, who endeavoured to learn what former ages had known, and who freely disseminated what they had acquired. Besides the rules of Latin poetry and rhetoric, they studied arithmetic and astro

nomy as laborious sciences. Arithmetic. In their arithmetic, before the introduction of

the Arabian figures, they followed the path of the ancients, and chiefly studied the metaphysical distinctions of numbers. They divided the even numbers into the useless arrangement of equally equal,

VII.

equally unequal, and unequally equal; and the CHAP. odd numbers into the simple, the composite, and the mean. They considered them again, as even or odd, superfluous, defective, or perfect, and under a variety of other distinctions, still more unnecessary for any practical application, which may be seen in the little tracts of Cassiodorus and Bede. Puzzled and perplexed with all this mazy jargon, Aldhelm might well say, that the labour of all his other acquisitions was small in the comparison with that which he endured in studying arithmetic. But that they attained great practical skill in calculation, the elaborate works of Bede sufficiently testify.

As all human ideas occur to the mind in some natural order of succession, and always connected with some previous remembrances and associations, the Anglo-Saxons could not become attached to the investigations of natural science, before preceding agencies had led them to attend to it. But all the impulses which were acting on their minds were operating in very different directions; and no general current in the world around them led them to anticipate the Arabs in the rich and unexplored country of experimental knowlege. Yet our venerable Bede made some attempts Bede's na

tural phito enter this new region ; and his treatise on the losophy. nature of things' shows that he endeavoured to introduce the study of natural philosophy among the Anglo-Saxons.

This work has two great merits. It assembles into one focus the wisest opinions of the ancients on the subjects he discusses, and it continually re

1 This is printed in the second volume of his works, p. 1., with the glosses of Bridferth of Ramsey, Joannes Noviomagus, and another.

IX.

BOOK fers the phenomena of nature to natural causes.

The imperfect state of knowlege prevented him
from discerning the true natural causes of many
things, but the principle of referring the events and
appearances of nature to its own laws and agencies
displays a mind of a sound philosophical tendency,

a
and was calculated to lead his countrymen to a
just mode of thinking on these subjects. Although
to teach that thunder and lightning were the col-
lisions of the clouds, and that earthquakes were
the effect of winds rushing through the spongy
caverns of the earth, were erroneous deductions,
yet they were light itself compared with the super-
stitions which other nations have attached to these
phenomena. Such theories directed the mind into
the right path of reasoning, though the correct
series of the connected events and the operating
laws had not then become known. The work of
Bede is evidence that the establishment of the
Teutonic nations in the Roman empire did not
barbarise knowlege. He collected and taught
more natural truths with fewer errors than any
Roman book on the same subjects had accom-
plished. Thus his work displays an advance, not
a retrogradation of human knowlege; and from
its judicious selection and concentration of the best
natural philosophy of the Roman empire, it does
high credit to the Anglo-Saxon good sense. The
following selections will convey a general idea of
the substance of its contents:-

1

Expressing the ancient opinion, that the heavens turned daily round, while the planets opposed them by a contrary course 2: he taught that the stars borrowed their light from the sun ; that the sun was eclipsed by the intervention of the

2 De Rer. Nat. p. 6.

CHAP
VII.

moon, and the moon by that of the earth ; that comets were stars with hairy flames, and that the wind was moved and agitated air. 3 He said that the rainbow is formed in clouds of four colours, from the sun being opposite, whose rays being darted into the cloud are repelled back to the sun. The rain is the cloud compressed by the air into heavier drops than it can support, and that these frozen make the hail. Pestilence is produced from the air, either by excess of dryness, or of heat, or of wet. 4 The tides of the ocean follow the moon, as if they were drawn backwards by its aspiration, and poured back on its impulse being withdrawn. The earth is surrounded by the

. waters ; it is a globe. Hence we see the northern stars but not the southern, because the globous figure of the earth intercepts them. 5

The volcano of Etna was the effect of fire and wind acting in the hollow sulphureous and bituminous earth of Sicily, and the barking dogs of Scylla were but the roaring of the waves in the whirlpools, which seamen hear. 6 He had remarked the sparkling of the sea on a night upon the oars, and thought it was followed by a tempest. So the frequent leaping of porpoises from the water had caught his notice, and he connected it with the rise of wind, and the clearing of the sky.? He remarks, in another work, that sailors poured oil on the sea to make it more transparent. He describes fully his ideas on the influence of the moon on the tides, and intimates that it also affects the air. 9 He speaks again of the roundness of the earth like a ball, and ascribes the inequality of days and nights to this globular rotundity. 10 He thinks the Antipodes a fable;

8