vivacity and universality of interest prompted thereby, has no parallel in the progress of our race. The passionate exhilaration then kindled by great popular events, such as the attempt to recover the Holy Land, transformed all susceptible classes too powerfully to admit of a relapse into apathy or ignorance. Thus the line of demarcation is clear, and the course of mediæval progress is not less evident. The tenth year of the fifth century saw Alaric with his Goths within the walls of Rome. By the year 476 of our era, Africa obeyed the Vandals; Spain and part of Gaul were subject to the Goths; the Burgundians and Franks occupied the remainder; and the Saxons ruled the most of Britain. From the great "Storehouse of Nations" were poured forth successive swarms of those barbarous tribes who were our progenitors, and who, in the moral course of things, pressed on from change to change, as humanity is ever compelled to ascend the arduous steep of excellence. From the fifth to the tenth century, the various races mingled without being compounded; but the collision of mighty nations, and the mixture of diverse mother-tongues, soon confounded all the dialects, and gave rise to new ones in their place. During these centuries of confusion which preceded and prepared the way for modern languages, it was impossible for Europe to possess any native literature. The talent for writing was small, and, indeed, the very materials were yet more limited. Parchment was enormously dear, and paper was not yet invented, or introduced by commerce into the West. It is said that the most sublime works of antiquity were sometimes erased, for the purpose of substituting some private agreement or some legendary tale.