Whatever measure of intellectual cultivation may have relieved the prevailing darkness, it emanated from the church. To men of the ecclesiastical profession we are indebted for the preservation of ancient literature; and they were almost the only authors who wrote during the period. The church afforded an asylum for the studious; and, in those times, quiet and reflective minds would naturally seek refuge in its bosom. It is difficult, even after much inquiry, to form a definite and accurate idea of the literary aspect of Europe in the dark ages; and next to impossible to convey, in the short space which we can here allot to it, a correct impression of the result of such inquiries. The seventh century may be fixed on as the nadir of the human mind.[2] Faint traces of the spirit of literature cheer the subsequent space of five hundred years, after which a very considerable revival of learning took place. General remarks as to the state of literature in Europe, daring the whole of this period, are likely to mislead, because the state of one country and of one century materially differed from another. The spirit of literature may be said to have migrated from land to land; now visiting the shores of Ireland and England, then passing over to France and Germany, and touching upon Italy, till there, in its classic form, it found a congenial home. Ireland and England were, probably, much in advance of their contemporaries, in the seventh and eighth centuries, but afterwards declined. France revived in the ninth, and went on progressing during the following ages; and, towards the latter part of the tenth century, Germany possessed many learned churchmen. In Italy, signs of improvement are perceptible in the eleventh century, but classical literature did not flourish there till the fifteenth.