The literary and social condition of Southern France was, with the single exception of Sicily, which bore to it a remarkable resemblance, anomalous among the countries of civilized Europe. Its population was singularly cosmopolitan; half a score of races had contributed to its formation; it had inherited the culture of the Greek, the Roman, the Arab; mixture of blood and comparison of creeds had produced universal toleration of belief and widespread and uncompromising skepticism. In its courts, its schools, its learned professions, Semitic ideas, traditions, and influence preponderated. Not a few Moslems had established themselves in the cities of Nîmes, Narbonne, and Toulouse, and the Jews abounded in every community which afforded encouragement to scientific attainments or facilities for traffic. The system of public instruction was essentially Hebrew; the faculty of the famous medical school of Montpellier, the successful competitor of that of Salerno, was at first principally composed of Jews and Mohammedans, and retained for centuries, amidst foreign conquest and domestic convulsion, the impress derived from the character of its founders. The closest relations were maintained between the academies of Languedoc and those of imperial Sicily and Moorish Spain. This intimacy was strengthened by the multiplicity of mercantile transactions arising from a constant interchange of commodities dependent upon a vast and profitable trade. The capitals of Cordova, Seville, and Palermo were better known to the people of Provence than any of the Mediterranean cities to the inland towns of continental Europe; now, great centres of wealth, commerce, and civilization; then, despised as semi-barbarous and rarely visited. The continuance of this friendly intercourse with Mohammedan countries, confirmed at once by congenial pursuits and by the powerful influence of pecuniary advantage, was portentous in its effects, and boded ill to the propagation of Christianity and the maintenance of ecclesiastical discipline. The succession of numerous forms of worship, distinct in their origin, unlike in their ceremonial, irreconcilably hostile in their polity, each asserting divine infallibility, yet each, in turn, overthrown by a new and more popular belief, was not favorable to the existence of any religion. Strongly attached to the cheerful festivals of Paganism, the inhabitants of Southern France had embraced the precepts of the Gospel with insincerity and reluctance. Their disposition, their traditions, the souvenirs of classic magnificence and beauty which surrounded them, all contributed to confirm the deeply grounded affection they entertained for the creed of their fathers. Nowhere else in Christendom was such a spectacle presented of all that is attractive to the luxurious, and all that is admired by the intellectual, as that disclosed by the life of the polished and corrupt society of Southern France. That entire region