We have said enough of the disorders of the ninth and tenth centuries to show that, whatever were the intellectual sterility of the Iron Age, there was cause enough to account for it. Let us now reverse the picture, and inquire whether the clergy resigned themselves contentedly to this lamentable state of things, or what means they took for amending it. Our wonder is, not that the age was one of literary decay, but that learning was not wholly extinguished; and the exertions made by a few to preserve a knowledge of letters in the midst of such unparalleled discouragements, strike us as more justly meriting admiration than all the magnificent institutions founded in more prosperous times. And such efforts were certainly made. In the ninth century the attention paid to the establishment of schools and the cultivation of learning under Charles the Bald and his successors, led Henry of Rheims to declare that it seemed as if the Grecian muses had migrated to France. This is, perhaps, a rhetorical flourish; yet most of the episcopal schools, the names of which are given by Mabillon, were founded during forty years of incessant civil distraction. Even when the ravages of the barbarians swept away the fruits of so many labours, how wonderful is the patient, hopeful perseverance displayed by the bishops in reconstructing their shattered work! Give them but a few years’ respite, a short interval of comparative tranquillity in any province, and you will invariably find the schools restored and the old discipline beginning over again. Thus Egidius, in his “History of the Bishops of Liege,” tells us of the extraordinary efforts made by Bishop Heraclius to re-establish studies in his diocese. It had borne the brunt of the Norman invasions in the ninth century; all the existing schools had been destroyed, and the ecclesiastics had grown so indifferent to the subject that, when Heraclius began his administration, he found no one to support him in his attempts to organise a fresh staff of teachers. And yet in a few years he succeeded in restoring monastic schools throughout the whole province, and reviving a love of learning among all classes. He accomplished this not so much by his exhortations as his example; for, says his biographer, “he did not think it beneath him to frequent these schools by turns, taking on himself the office of teacher, giving lectures to the elder students, and patiently explaining and repeating his lessons to those who did not understand him. When he travelled to any distance he always corresponded with his scholars, sporting with them in pleasant verse. Even from Italy and Calabria he remembered to send them agreeable letters to provoke them to the love of study, and he generally took some of them with him on his journeys, that he might beguile the tediousness of the way by conferring with them on the Holy Scriptures.” His successor, Notger, carried on the good work with even greater ardour. Like Heraclius, he always taught in his