In this age at least may be discerned the budding of a taste and sentiment that betokened the refinement of after times. Gothic architecture, the first efflorescence of the Northern genius after it had been planted in the soil of Southern art, now appeared in such buildings as the cathedrals of Pisa, Modena, Parma, Siena, Strasburg, Treves, Worms, Mayence, Basel, Chartres, Brussels, and the foundation of St. Mark’s in Venice. The dreaded year 1000 having safely passed without the anticipated destruction of the world, faith reinspired art to build temples on earth. New monasteries appeared, palatial in structure, to accommodate the people who sought in seclusion escape from the hardness or the dreariness of life in the world. It must, however, be recognized that whatever brilliancy of intelligence, beauty of character, or enterprise appeared betokened a coming rather than illustrated a passing age, like the wild flowers that shoot from the cold ground in the early spring. To picture these brighter things, were the genial task pursued to any great extent, would endanger the accuracy of the impression made upon the reader’s mind. Hallam truly says of this period: “History which reflects only the more prominent features of society cannot exhibit the virtues that were scarcely able to struggle through the general depravation.” This was an age of gross ignorance. The art of making paper from cotton had just been discovered, and, while it contributed somewhat to the diffusion of knowledge by giving cheaper manuscript books than those on vellum, the world was to wait four centuries longer for the printing-press to popularize the habit of seeking information. The few manuscripts which existed were the property of monasteries or of the nobility, who kept them as articles of furniture rather than for their practical use. We have a verbal monument to the ignorance of these times in the expression we still use when we speak of “signing,” or making a mark to signify, one’s name. In the ninth century Herbaud, the supreme judge of the empire, could not write his name, and as late as the fourteenth century Du Guesclin, high constable of France, was equally innocent of letters. One of their contemporaries gives this tribute to the ecclesiastics of the time: “They were given rather to the gullet than to the tongue (_gulæ quam glossæ_). They preferred to be schooled in salmon rather than in Solomon (_salmone quam Solomone_).” Few priests could translate the breviary they recited with parrot tongues. Of the history of the grand civilization just behind them the people knew nothing; even the laws which had so long preserved the state and society, those of Justinian, were forgotten except in some cloisters, where they were studied as classic lore.