“One of the later Greek schools,” says Bacon, “is at a standstill to think what should be in it that men should so love lies;” yet he presently adds, “the mixture thereof doth ever give pleasure.” Charity, then, obliges us to believe that the fictitious element which appears in these passages has only been added to stimulate the pleasure of the reader. In perusing them, and scores of others which might easily be accumulated from writers both great and petty, we are, of course, left with the impression on our minds, that not only was the ignorance most dense, gross, and universal, but that it found its cause in the low cunning of the clergy, and especially of the monks, who had just wit enough to keep the rest of the world in darkness. And as the first writer has expressly told us that their object in doing this was to maintain that flourishing state of monastic prosperity which, we are assured, existed in proportion to the spread of ignorance, we are logically bound to suppose that the countries and the times wherein darkness thus prevailed were the Elysium and the golden age of monkhood. No one certainly would be led to suppose that the iron, leaden, and pitch-dark state of society in the tenth century, could be accounted for by any particular circumstances in the history of the times, which, far from favouring the monastic institute, all but destroyed it, and did totally eradicate it in the districts most subject to their influence. No,--our historians do not so much as allude to such insignificant episodes in history as the irruptions of three new races of barbarians, but complacently refer us to the superstition and selfishness of the Bishop of Rome and his clergy, which they regard, as a certain astronomer regarded the spots in the sun, as being “large enough to account for anything.” The prospect before us looks but dreary; and in candour it must be confessed that a nearer acquaintance with this unhappy period will not set it in a more advantageous light. It was indeed a time as dark and terrible as the imagination can well depict, though whether the human mind were altogether in a state of ruin, and whether the darkness were exclusively the work of the monks, and whether monasteries grew and prospered as ignorance increased, or whether some other possible causes may not be assigned for the state of things so universally deplored, are questions which cannot be resolved without a glance at the current history of the times.