Like the great and distinct periods of history under Pericles and Augustus, a certain adequate and cotemporaneous expression pervaded the whole age of Leo X. Its successive steps were marked by the papal domination of the beginning of the middle ages; the universal feudal system; the period of universities springing up everywhere; the periods of art; the periods of Abelard and scholastic philosophy; the rising of free cities all over Europe; the ardor of maritime discovery and enthusiasm for "cosmography;" the period of monasteries and Protestantism. Each in succession ruled with supreme power, so long as it possessed the chief life. For example, at the needful time, feudalism was a vital organization; and so long as this remained genuine and spontaneous, it was the true and living expression of man's necessities. But when the feudal system was transferred from the field to the court, where the pen of the lawyer supplanted the sword of the knight, and a piece of parchment became more powerful than warlike pennons, the life of feudalism was gone, and nothing remained but a clattering skeleton amid its dead formalities. Systems die, but beneath their surface there is an immortality which can not suffer diminution of any kind, but must eternally _evolve_. Each system has a separate idea to exemplify, and the grand truth inculcated by all these successive lessons remains, when each petty teacher has disappeared. Let us briefly recapitulate the historic facts connected with the last and best of literatures, the English. The Anglo-Saxons, originally the fiercest nation of the predatory North, had become an unwarlike nation, and quite degenerate. The venerated relics of their civilization existed, but the soul was nearly gone, and a mental torpidity pervaded the entire country. Canute roused the people for a moment, but they soon sank into stolid indifference again. Then was needed the Norman conquest to shake the whole fabric to its base, and infuse a vigorous spirit through all classes of the community. That mightiest people beyond the channel came over at exactly the right time, and brought all the best continental elements with them. The influence of the Norman conquest on the language of England has been compared to an inundation, which at first submerges the landscape beneath its turbid billows, but which at last subsiding, leaves behind it the germs of fresh beauty and augmented wealth. The ancestors of this new people had been fierce pirates, but they became the chief revivers of literature, and the grand promoters of the peaceful arts. It is a notable fact, that Lanfranc, their prime leader in this noble enterprise, was a Lombard, and that his people had been the most barbarous of all the Gothic invaders. Yet among them literary studies were first revived in Italy, the most celebrated schools were established, and the most enterprising citizens were formed into the most cultivated states. From them, and