The torrent of irrational superstitions which carried all before it in the fifth century, and the progress of ascetic enthusiasm, had an influence still more decidedly inimical to learning. I cannot indeed conceive any state of society more adverse to the intellectual improvement of mankind than one which admitted of no middle line between gross dissoluteness and fanatical mortification. An equable tone of public morals, social and humane, verging neither to voluptuousness nor austerity, seems the most adapted to genius, or at least to letters, as it is to individual comfort and national prosperity. After the introduction of monkery and its unsocial theory of duties, the serious and reflecting part of mankind, on whom science most relies, were turned to habits which, in the most favourable view, could not quicken the intellectual energies; and it might be a difficult question whether the cultivators and admirers of useful literature were less likely to be found among the profligate citizens of Rome and their barbarian conquerors or the melancholy recluses of the wilderness. Such therefore was the state of learning before the subversion of the Western Empire. And we may form some notion how little probability there was of its producing any excellent fruits, even if that revolution had never occurred, by considering what took place in Greece during the subsequent ages; where, although there was some attention shown to preserve the best monuments of antiquity, and diligence in compiling from them, yet no one original writer of any superior merit arose, and learning, though plunged but for a short period into mere darkness, may be said to have languished in a middle region of twilight for the greater part of a thousand years.