If the spread of the rural Franks and of the Anglo-Saxons into the erstwhile Roman domains led to the submergence of the old cities and to much village foundation, there is at any rate a growing opinion that it did not destroy all continuity in either Gaul or Britain, that a good deal in our rural life goes back, as above hinted, to the late Bronze Age. The system of the manor under which the villagers give service to a military protector is too easily mixed up with the village system in discussions. The manor, with complex origins, is characteristic of post-Roman days of movement and strife. The civilizing element promoting agriculture and the law is furnished by the Church, which, with the centuries, spread its work over the Rhine, beyond the bounds of the Empire, right away to the limits of Europe-of-the-Sea, that is of the lands near Baltic or Mediterranean, or west of a north-south line near the east ends of those seas. With the settling down which heralded the Middle Ages after the Dark Centuries of movement and war, we thus find the following broad facts. In the Mediterranean, where fruit culture and the city-state and trade were already old, that type of life reasserted itself even though the division of life on the north and the south sides (characteristic long before in Phoenician times) of the sea made grave difficulties. In Spain the conflict between Islam and Christians inhibited the development of both and delayed everything. In both cases the military organization was unhealthily important, and the Muslim of the south kept much of their old social scheme based on the tribe, whereas they should have been adapting themselves to the rich land of Andalusia which they held. The result of the inhibitions made the Muslim far more of a misfit in the Andalusian garden than were the Christians on the heights of northern Spain, where seasonal movement of flocks and herds (_transhumance_) is still {95} very important. The Muslim of the south thus gradually declined both in value and in influence, and though in earlier times they had been far more cultured than their Christian foemen, they had dropped far behind in organization before their subjugation in the fifteenth century. One should nevertheless bear in mind possible valuable survivals from the Muslim in matters of detail or of individual work. In Gaul cultivation had spread and had improved under monastic leadership; markets were growing under protection of the cathedrals, and were becoming the town centres that have persisted as the highly characteristic market towns of the Paris basin. After years of rivalry with Frankish dialects the old Roman heritage of language triumphed with some compromises, and became the _langue d'oïl_, the speech of the Paris basin and upper Burgundy, and the progenitor of standard modern French. In Britain the rural element seems to have predominated until Gaulish influences again became strong in the eleventh century.