"In the beginning of the Middle Ages, at the commencement of the fifth century, the Barbarians made an inroad upon the old world; their renewed invasions crushed out, in the course of a few years, the Greek and Roman civilization; and everywhere darkness succeeded to light. The religion of Jesus Christ was alone capable of resisting this barbarian invasion, and science and literature, together with the arts, disappeared from the face of the earth, taking refuge in the churches and monasteries. It was there that they were preserved as a sacred deposit, and it was thence that they emerged when Christianity had renovated pagan society. But centuries and centuries elapsed before the sum of human knowledge was equal to what it had been at the fall of the Roman empire. A new society, moreover, was needed for the new efforts of human intelligence as it resumed its rights. Schools and universities were founded under the auspices of the clergy and of the religious corporations, and thus science and literature were enabled to emerge from their tombs. Europe, amidst the tumultuous conflicts of the policy which made and unmade kingdoms, witnessed a general revival of the scholastic zeal; poets, orators, novelists, and writers increased in numbers and grew in favour; savants, philosophers, chemists and alchemists, mathematicians and astronomers, travellers and naturalists, were awakened, so to speak, by the life-giving breath of the Middle Ages; and great scientific discoveries and admirable works on every imaginable subject showed that the genius of modern society was not a whit inferior to that of antiquity. Printing, was invented, and with that brilliant discovery, the Middle Ages, which had accomplished their work of social renovation, made way for the Renaissance, which scattered abroad in profusion the prolific and brilliant creations of Art, Science, and Literature." This author to some extent discredits himself, however, p. 455, where he remarks: "Long before the invasions of the Barbarians the histories written by Greek and Latin authors concerning the annals of the ancient peoples had been falling into disfavor. Even the best of them were little read, for the Christians felt but slight interest in these pagan narratives, and that is why works relating to the history of antiquity were already so scarce." Another authority writing on the same subject discusses it from a different standpoint, remarking: