But, at length, they were able to establish a permanent law, which secured a periodical and frequent interval of quietude in those troublous times. It was enacted in Aquitain, A.D. 1041, that from vespers on Wednesday evening, till the hour of dawn on Monday morning, no one should dare to assault his enemy without incurring the dreaded penalty of excommunication.[8] The law was soon afterwards extended to other countries; and in England, also, it was observed--the time of the truce being altered to the Ember days, Advent, Lent, the vigils and festivals of Christ, the virgin Mary, the apostles, and all saints, and every Sunday, reckoning from the hour of nine on Saturday evening to the dawn of light on Monday morning.[9] This was a welcome boon, and many would anxiously anticipate, and joyfully hail, the appointed time of vespers, when the authority of the church threw around them a defence more impregnable than the walls of a castle, and they could lie down and sleep in peace. [1] Gesta, Caroli Magni, Florence, 1823, p. 37. [2] Hallam, Middle Ages, chap. ix. 1. [3] Mansi, xviii. 67, 177. Quoted in Giesler, ii. 112. [4] Ratherii, Itinerarium. D'Achery, Spic. i. 381. [5] We have adopted the vigorous translation of this letter in the Quarterly Review, vol. lviii. 437. [6] D'Achery, Spic. tom. ii. 87. [7] Robertson's View of the State of Europe, Note xx. [8] Glab. Radulph Giesler, ii. 118. [9] Lingard, Hist. of England, i. 472. SECTION IV. LITERATURE AND ART. Next to the moral condition of mankind, their intellectual state is the most interesting subject of inquiry. The dark ages form a kind of parenthesis in the history of the human mind in Europe. A long and brilliant period of intellectual cultivation and energy preceded them; and an era, in many respects, of still higher attainment and of richer promise has followed. The night which comes between two such days seems very gloomy, yet is there much truth in the observation, "that there was always a faint twilight, like that auspicious gleam, which, in a summer's night, fills up the interval between the setting and the rising sun."[1] Nor should it be forgotten, that before the commencement of the mediæval period, there had been a great decline in sound learning; and that the nations of Europe, whose ignorance we deplore, were, for the most part, the descendants not of the classic nations of antiquity, but of the rude barbarians of the north.