But the interest of the time is not confined to political history. It abounds with character. It is an age in which there are very many great men, and in which the great men not only occupy but deserve the first place in the historian’s eye. It is their history rather than the history of their peoples that furnishes the contribution of the period to the world’s progress. This is the heroic period of the middle ages,--the only period during which, on a great scale and on a great stage, were exemplified the true virtues which were later idealized and debased in the name of chivalry,--the age of John of Brienne and Simon de Montfort, of the two great Fredericks, of St. Bernard and Innocent III., and of St. Lewis and Edward I. It is free for the most part from the repulsive features of the ages that precede, and from the vindictive cruelty and political immorality of the age that follows. Manners are more refined than in the earlier age and yet simpler and sincerer than those of the next; religion is more distinctly operative for good and less marked by the evils which seem inseparable from its participation in the political action of the world. Yet not even the thirteenth century was an age of gold, much less those portions of the twelfth and fourteenth which come within our present view. It was not an age of prosperity, although it was an age of growth; its gains were gained in great measure by suffering. If Lewis IX. and Edward I. taught the world that kings might be both good men and strong sovereigns, Henry III. and Lewis VII. taught it that religious habits and even firm convictions are too often insufficient to keep the weak from falsehood and wrong. The history of Frederick II. showed that the race is not always to the swift or the battle to the strong, that of Conrad and Conradin that the right is not always to triumph, and that the vengeance which evil deeds must bring in the end comes in some cases very slowly and with no remedy to those who have suffered. [Sidenote: Importance of England’s work in this epoch. ] [Sidenote: Character of this book. ]