As the tide ebbs here, it rises elsewhere. When the Mohammedan civilization had spread with the rapidity of lightning toward the West, where it was overpowered by France, Charlemagne created the first real elements of national organization; he so modified sacred and secular legislation as to establish civil power on the basis of spiritual authority. This followed immediately upon that fusion and variety to which Europe is indebted for all that manifoldness of excellence which may be traced in modern literature, art, and science. During ten centuries, a general confusion and fermentation was all that the superficial might observe; but a deeper investigation revealed an utility in the decrees of Providence of the sublimest moment, for it produced a new civilization, the richest and most fertile earth had borne. Instead of universal ruin, every thing bore the impress of regeneration. There was darkness, indeed, but it was a gloom out of which auspicious light arose, a healthy, vigorous barbarism which contained the latent seed of loftiest culture. Society at large was for a long time a chaotic mass, not, however, of dead matter, but of living and moving germs ready to spring into full bloom at the first touch of creative power. As from the bosom of primeval night, the brightness, vitality, and order of the universe were gradually unfolded, so the political and religious institutions of the Teutonic race, the mighty fabric of mediæval civilization, sprung from the inborn vigor of noble barbarism. Mind was not less active nor less powerful than that in earlier ages, but still contained within itself the eternal elements from which a new creation was to spring. The waters subsided, and fertile soils again teemed with life; but new trees and plants, and new races appeared, and but few vestiges remained of the ancient order of things. It is cheering to contemplate the progressive national development, the fullness of life, the stir, the activity, manifested in the commerce and industry, art and science of Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and England, from the fifth to the fifteenth century, compared with the mournful monotony which pervaded the Byzantine empire. The dead treasures of Grecian knowledge were never turned to account till they were grasped by the vigorous Teutonic intellect in its maturity, and when, on the destruction of the eastern empire, the seeds of that immortal literature were scattered over the wide domain of the free West. The habits of mental exertion, prior to Pericles, which led to supreme political and intellectual dominion over the East, were confirmed by the emergencies of a foreign invasion. The genius of the Augustan age was matured in the civil wars which rocked the cradle of Rome and nourished her growth. But the restoration of literature and the arts in western Europe was achieved through an instrumentality utterly unlike the preceding steps of human advancement; and which, in