In the sixth century lived Gregory of Tours, whose ten volumes of original annals entitle him to be called the father of French and German story. In A.D. 668, Theodore, an Asiatic Greek by birth, was sent to old England by the pope, through whom and his companion, Adrian, some knowledge of the classics was diffused among the Anglo-Saxon race. Early in the eighth century arose the great ornament of that age and island, the Venerable Bede, who surpassed every other name in primitive literature of indigenous growth. The central school of York was established, whence the Anglo-Saxon Alcuin came to be the great luminary at the court of Charlemagne. But during the long wars waged by the successors of that great agent of Providence, all seemed to relapse into utter confusion again, and ignorance stretched its roots deeper down, to the year one thousand of our era, which has been considered as the lowest extreme of degradation, the nadir of human intelligence. It was indeed an iron age, but compared with the seventh and eighth centuries, the tenth possessed superior illumination as a whole. Darkness and calamity were still the concomitants of progress, but the shadows grew fainter as night declined, and the nations rejoiced in the new twilight which reddened into the lustre of a higher day. The intellectual energies of mankind might be impeded, but they were never in an absolutely stationary condition; but nations, as well as individuals, were born in the fitting time and place to advance the landmarks of popular improvement and the general weal. At the moment when the great West lay apparently torpid, in the silent formation of a powerful amalgamation of all old historical elements, a new nation was suddenly produced to gather up whatever valuable relics remained in the East, and bring them across continents to the great fountain of subsequent improvement. Masters of the country of the Magi, and the Chaldeans, whence the first light had shone over mankind; of Egypt, the storehouse of human science; of Asia Minor, that fertile and beautiful land, where poetry and the fine arts had their origin; and of the burning plains of Africa, that dark domain of Ham, the country of impetuous eloquence, and subtle intellect; Arabian adventurers, the splendid bastard progeny of Shem, in a manner combined within themselves the advantages of all the nations which they had subjugated, and laid the invaluable treasures they accumulated at the feet of Japhet, on the throne of the West.