The boundaries of the realm of learning extended far beyond the limits of the Empire, and the Arabian science was equally famous among the Moors of Spain and in the further parts of Asia. We are told of a doctor refusing the invitation of the Sultan of Bokhara, 'because the carriage of his books would have required four hundred camels.' We know that the Ommiad dynasty formed the gigantic library at Cordova, and that there were at least seventy others in the colleges that were scattered through the kingdom of Granada. The prospect was very dark in other parts of Western Europe throughout the whole period of barbarian settlement. We shall not endeavour to trace the slight influences that preserved some knowledge of religious books at the Court of the Merovingian kings, or among the Visigoths and Ostrogoths and Burgundians. We prefer to pause at a moment preceding the final onslaught. The letters of Sidonius afford us a few glimpses of the literary condition of Southern Gaul soon after the invasion of Attila. The Bishop of Clermont gives us a delightful picture of his house: a verandah leads from the _atrium_ to the garden by the lake: we pass through a winter-parlour, a morning-room, and a north-parlour protected from the heat. Every detail seems to be complete; and yet we hear nothing of a library. The explanation seems to be that the Bishop was a close imitator of Pliny. The villa in Auvergne is a copy of the winter-refuge at Laurentum, where Pliny only kept 'a few cases contrived in the wall for the books that cannot be read too often.' But when the Bishop writes about his friends' houses we find many allusions to their libraries. Consentius sits in a large book-room when he is composing his verses or 'culling the flowers of his music.' When he visited the Prefect of Gaul, Sidonius declared that he was whirled along in a stream of delights. There were all kinds of out-door amusements and a library filled with books. 'You would fancy yourself among a Professor's book-cases, or in a book-shop, or amid the benches of a lecture-room.' The Bishop considered that this library of the Villa Prusiana was as good as anything that could be found in Rome or Alexandria. The books were arranged according to subjects. The room had a 'ladies' side'; and here were arranged the devotional works. The illuminated volumes, as far as can now be judged, were rather gaudy than brilliant, as was natural in an age of decadence; but St. Germanus was a friend of the Bishop, and as we suppose of the Prefect, and his copy of the Gospels was in gold and silver letters on purple vellum, as may still be seen. By the gentlemen's seats were ranged the usual classical volumes, all the works of Varro, which now exist only in fragments, and the poets sacred and profane; behind certain cross-benches was the literary food of a lighter kind, more suited to the weaker vessels without regard to sex. Here every one found what would suit his own