After a long and dreary period of ignorance, the nations of Europe began to arouse themselves from the lethargy in which they had been plunged; _religious enthusiasm then awakened the ardour of heroism_, and the wild but fascinating spirit of chivalry--whose actions were the offspring of disinterested valour, that looked for no reward but the smile of favouring beauty or grateful tear of redressed misfortune,--taught the world that humanity and benevolence were no less meritorious than undaunted courage and athletic strength. Knowledge, however, advanced with slow and timid steps from the cells of the monks, in which she had been obliged to conceal herself, whilst her rival, Ignorance, had been exalted to palaces and thrones. From the period which succeeded that twilight of the Goths and Vandals, when all the useful arts were obscured and concealed by indolent indifference, we shall find that each succeeding age happily contributed to enlighten the world by the revival and gradual improvement of the arts and sciences; a corresponding elevation in the general sagacity of the human mind was the natural consequence: this can readily be shown by the proportionate decrease of the numerous methods by which specious impostors lived upon the credulity of others. Few, it is to be hoped, in the present day seek consolation for disappointment in the mysteries of astrological judgments, or attribute their ill-success in life to an evil conjunction of the stars, as revealed by the deluding horoscope of a caster of nativities. That age has at length passed away, when the search after the philosopher’s stone, or the universal solvent, terminated a life of incredible toil and hopeless expectation, in poverty and contempt. But there are still many who neglect the experience of the past, and, anxious to know their future fate, seek it in the fortune-teller’s cards; or, unhappily, a prey to some of those ills that flesh is heir to, would rather seek to expedite their cure by some specious but empirical experiment, than wait for the slower but surer results of time and experience. CHAPTER II. ON ANCIENT ORACLES, ETC.