their cities, Pisa and Pavia, learning was planted, under Charlemagne, in France, and replanted both there and in England, under Lanfranc, once an obscure schoolmaster at Bec, in Normandy, and after the conquest Archbishop of Canterbury. The seeds of knowledge, thus timely sown, yielded in due time an abundant harvest. Literary pursuits soon became a source of distinction and preferment. All ranks caught the flame; and on the diffusion of vernacular letters, intelligence no longer dwelt within the cells of a cloister or the walls of a school, but adorned the chamber of the lady, the hall of the baron, and the court of the prince. Intelligence glorified the warrior's iron mail and trophied lance abroad; while at home, domestic solicitudes were assuaged, and gentle virtues ennobled, by the laudable ambition to learn both to read and write. After the twelfth century in England, ignorance became discreditable, the mark of a barbarous origin and a degraded taste. Itinerant minstrels had for a long time been the instruments of poetry, but the offices of composer and musician were now separated. Special attention was given to that form of literature, so popular in the streets and at the festival, in the study, and in the cloister, while its measured syllables were made the vehicle of better strains than those which exhilarated at the banquet or corrupted the populace. As we have above stated, the English language was of the latest formation, and was partially developed in the thirteenth century through some metrical poems. Henry II., who was himself a great proficient in history, encouraged and rewarded its popular writers, who were also fostered by his queen Eleanora, a troubadour by birth. At the accession of Henry III., still brighter rays beamed forth upon the western isle. His reign connected England with Jerusalem, whither the crusading armies still went; with Constantinople, whose exiled emperor sought his support; with the south of Italy, by the intercourse of himself and his clergy with the pope, and by the crowds of emigrants whom the pontiff poured upon British soil; with the north of Italy, where he sent knights to assist the emperor against Milan; with Armenia, whose friars came for a refuge from the Tartars; with Germany, whose emperor married his sister; with Provence and Savoy, from which both he and his brother had their wives; with Spain, where his son was knighted and wedded; with France, which he visited with much pomp; with its southern regions, Guienne and Poitou, which he retained; and with the countries on the Rhine, where his brother went to obtain the empire.