Thus _Zeus_, the life-giving principle is the father of _Clio_, the muse of history, whose mother is _Mnemosyne_, or memory. History then is the memory of men's acts and God's providences, and combines a heavenly with an earthly nature. She is the daughter of God and man; but, alas, the purblind philosophy of the nineteenth century has not attained to the lofty views of heathen wisdom! What a startling fact, that men brought up amid the glorious light of the present age should deny that divine {76} intervention in human affairs which even the very heathens admitted! The beginning of the fifteenth century finds Boniface IX., on the pontifical throne. During his reign the papal power culminated and began to decline. No empire of ancient or modern times has experienced such marvelous and varied vicissitudes, as those which have befallen the empire of the Roman church. Born in obscurity and reared in adversity, that church nevertheless succeeded in climbing to a loftier throne and grasping the scepter of a more absolute dominion than either a Xerxes or an Alexander could boast. Pretending to despise mere worldly gains, she cunningly turned the channels of riches towards herself, and emptied them without scruple into her own coffers. When Boniface ascended the papal throne, the authority of Rome was apparently greater than ever; but in reality it was much undermined by the advancing labors of civilization. Society had made a great advance in the previous eight hundred years. In the seventh century, a cloud of more than Egyptian darkness overshadowed Europe. Then it was occupied by wandering savages; now it was organized into families, neighborhoods and cities. The seventh century left it full of bondmen; the fifteenth found it without a slave. Where there had been trackless forests there were now the abodes of civilized men. Instead of bloody chieftains drinking out of their enemies' skulls, there were grave professors teaching the laws of nature and the principles of science.