Here we must close our notice of the towns in the dark ages, and, with it, our brief and imperfect review of the general social condition of Europe, during that period. It certainly was not the age of great cities. They did not flourish then; manufactures, commerce, the arts and habits of peaceful enterprise, all of which form the sinews of strength in civic communities, were in a feeble state. Towns did not take a leading part in the movement of society, and did not give expression to the spirit of the age, as they do in our day. In looking at the church, the monastery, and the feudal castle, it must be felt that there, not in the town, was to be found the presiding genius of the times. They were the chief social elements then at work; they belonged to the period; they inspired it, and gave a shape to its affairs; but towns, properly speaking, belong to other eras, to times before and after, and come in, during the age reviewed, merely as links uniting the forms of ancient and modern civilisation. Yet toward the end of the dark ages they are seen reviving, and beginning once more to play a conspicuous part on the stage of the world, giving obvious presages of what they have since become. Abundant materials for reflection are presented to the reader, in the five short chapters which compose this little volume. These sketches illustrate the plan of Divine Providence. Perhaps, in looking at the facts reviewed, the reader will be struck with the slow advance of human improvement, and with the permission and long continuance of so much that was apparently useless, and even pernicious in the institutions, habits, and spirit of society. Without touching upon the great problem of the ultimate cause of moral evil in the universe of God--which is a question not to be fathomed by the limited intellect of man--it may be observed, that the state of things which obtained in Europe, for so many centuries, is but analogous to what we find has taken place in the physical creation. In looking back upon the natural history of our world, we find that the operation of the Divine laws has been slow and gradual; that geological eras of long duration have occurred, in which much was going on that might seem useless, and even hurtful: we see, for example, that vast spaces of time were occupied by the growth of vegetation in wild and rank luxuriance, which apparently yielded no advantage, which was connected with a state of the atmosphere unfavourable to animal life, and which was, at length, submerged beneath the waters, probably by some terrific convulsions. But these slow and gradual changes have issued in the present beautiful and useful condition of the physical world, and these long periods of seeming useless, and even pernicious vegetation, were the eras of our coal formations, when those treasures were being prepared upon which modern comfort, modern art, and modern civilisation so much depend.