over which he had placed Alcwyn, he did not disdain himself to come and sit among his pupils. With the aid of Alcwyn he spared no pains to restore in France the cultivation of literature and the knowledge of religion. It is almost impossible, indeed, to form an idea of the ardour with which the vigorous, earnest, and entirely fresh mind of Charlemagne threw himself into the pursuit of learning and science. Alcwyn,' says Eginhard, was able to appease in some measure the thirst for knowledge which consumed Karl, but never to wholly satisfy it.' Alcwyn became, in the expression of M. Guizot, for Karla sort of intellectual Prime Minister.' Nevertheless Alcwyn, older than Karl and more versed in the history of the human intellect, thought it prudent at times to endeavour to modify the intensity of hope with which Karl awaited the speedy elevation of the European mind to the ancient heights of intellectual superiority. It does not depend on you or me,' he wrote to him, 'to make a Christian Athens of France.' But that which especially distinguishes Charlemagne, and shows his real inborn genius, is, that with all his love of Latin, of letters, and his recognition of the intellectual eminence of Greece and Rome, he aimed at no imitative phase of civilization, but at something essentially new, something truly Frank and German. Thus, he caused a German grammar to be compiled; and he gave to the months and to the winds names -not derived, however, from Rome, as later times have done, but names of pure Frank etymology; he caused a collection of Teutonic war-songs and Teutonic songs and ballads to be made, which celebrated the actions of former chiefs-a collection unhappily not now in existence, but which doubtless contained much of what is now confused together in the Niebelungen,' whose main action is undoubtedly taken from Merovingian history, and the terrible struggle between Fredegonda and Brunehilde. Equally characteristic in this respect was his aversion to foreign costumes, his adherence to the national dress, and the fact of his never having worn the chlamys, the robe in which he was crowned by the Pope, but twice in his life. real conception of the politic and intellectual grandeur of such a chief is to be found in the Chansons de Geste. There are documents, however-the Chronicle of the Monk of St. Gall, and the biography of Eginhard-which help to place him more vividly before the eyes, both as he was represented in the popular imagination of his time, and in his real manner and habit as he lived. No We learn from Eginhard that Charlemagne was of a powerful frame, tall and well-proportioned, although his neck was some what what short; that his hair was abundant, and his countenance frank and full of animation. His step was firm, his attitudes imposing, but his voice seemed somewhat weak for so powerful a body; his health never ceased to be vigorous except during the last four years of his life; and he had a great aversion to being doctored. He was passionately fond of riding and hunting -like all the Franks. He was temperate both in eating and drinking, especially in the latter, as he hated drunkenness. During dinner he liked to hear music, or ballads recited by minstrels, or to listen to the reading of history, and especially of the works of St. Augustine. He was accessible to demands of justice night and day: he was fond of talking, and discoursed with abundance on everything. He adhered to the costume of the Franks, and disliked foreign costumes. He wore a linen shirt next his skin, over this a tunic with a fringe of silk. His chausses were bound by scarlet bands which crossed each other over his thighs and legs; and he wore buskins of gilt leather with long laces. In the winter he wore a large robe of otterskin. His sword was always by his side, and the hilt and belt were either gilt or silvered. On state occasions he wore a robe of stuff of gold, and his buskins were enriched with precious stones; his sash was fastened with a gold clasp; he wore a crown of gold, which was, with his sword, ornamented with precious stones. On ordinary occasions his costume differed little from that of the common people. If the Chansons de Geste, however, add little to our knowledge of Charlemagne himself, it is to them that historian, archæologist, and philologist must turn to have any accurate conception of the real state of France in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, and of the origin and growth of the French language. The dead recitals of the Chronicles tell us little of the state of society; but here we have feudalism clothed with real flesh and blood, animated with its fiercest passions, and illustrated with many a trait which throws light on the manners and customs of the time. It is from the contemplation of the state of society among this ruder northern race of the langue d'oil that one turns with a grateful sense to that which engendered the sweet songs of the langue d'oc, in which the sentiment is often as tender, graceful, and delicate as if they were composed yesterday, and in which were contained in germ all the sweeter graces and sensibilities of chivalry and of modern life.* * It In the songs of three only of the late Trouvères,-Ouènes de Bethune, the Châtellain de Coucy, and Thibaut Count of Champagne and King of Navarre,— are to be found strains equal in gentleness of thought to those of the Southern Troubadours. One of the Chansons, of the King of Navarre, that beginning • De It is worth while observing how it was this immense body of French poetry passed out of sight, so as to be quite unknown until a few years ago. In the first place, a spurious monkish compilation, the Chronicle of the false Turpin, assisted to thrust the Chanson de Roland' into obscurity. This chronicle was forged by an archbishop of Vienne, about the middle of the eleventh century, for the purpose of bringing the shrine of St. James of Compostella into repute. This same archbishop, on becoming Pope, under the name of Calixtus II., in 1090, in order to give his own compilation more importance, anathematized all the existing romances of the trouvères about Charlemagne, and succeeded in consigning them to neglect, and in thrusting his own forgery on posterity as a real historical document. Then came the immense popularity of the romances of Chrestien de Troyes and the romances of the Round Table, which were so complete an embodiment of the more finely developed sentiments of a new generation, for whom the rough manners of their ancestors had lost its charm. Then followed an age in which the ecclesiastical power declined before the ascendancy of the civil-an age of subtlety, and chicanery, and faithlessness; of law and politics, personified in the relentless figure of Philip the Fair, and, for that generation, the subtle allegories and conceits of the interminable Roman de la Rose, formed the most congenial reading-a composition long preferred by the most accomplished intellects of those times to the poem of Dante. Subsequently, during the civil convulsions of France, and the desolation brought about by the English wars, the mind of the French underwent a fundamental change, out of which the very language came entirely reminted, and the old French of the thirteenth century was supplanted by French differing in no point of construction or declension from the French of the present time. Carlovingian legend, however, after making a pilgrimage through all the literature of Europe, sprung up into new life, not in France, but in Italy; and in a more universally acceptable and enduring form in the works of Pulci, Boiardo, and Ariosto. 'De fine amor vient seance et bonté Et amours vient de ces deus autres is quoted three times by Dante in his Treatise 'De vulgari eloquentiâ.' Richard Cœur de Lion composed not in the tongue of the Troubadours but in that of the Trouvères. The Trouvères were for the langue d'oil what the Troubadours were for the langue d'oc; their office was trover, to invent-they were poets. The jongleurs were mere reciters. They recited the chanson in the market-places of towns and in the halls of the vassals, to the accompaniment of a vielle or rebeck, a kind of violin. The Neapolitan lazzarone still loves to lie on the Mole at Naples and listen to his jongleur. ART. ART. II.-1. Platonis Euthydemus et Laches, Præfixa est Epistola ad Senatum Lugdunensem Batavorum. Auctore Carolo Badham. Londini, item Edinæ, Williams et Norgate. Jenæ, Fr. Frommann. 1865. 2. Platonis Convivium, cum Epistola ad Thompsonum. Edidit Carolus Badham. Londini et Edina: apud Williams et Norgate. Jenæ, Fr. Frommann. 1866. W WHILE the place of the classical languages and literature in a liberal education has been vehemently attacked and successfully defended, the actual state of classical learning has scarcely been scrutinized as it deserved. Our Universities and public schools-welcoming in some cases, or compelled to admit in others, a larger infusion of exact and experimental science-have yet stood firm to the Greek and Latin languages as the best means of training the intellect and taste, and to the knowledge of ancient literature and life as the origin of modern civilisation. Their attention, however, has been in the mean time somewhat withdrawn from questions that once excited a keener interest. The crisis, when an insulting enemy is to be repulsed from our bulwarks, is not the moment for undertaking a minute investigation of the treasures we have to defend; and, in vindicating the surpassing worth of the ancient poets and orators, historians and philosophers, we have too hastily assumed that we have a sufficient knowledge of what those treasures in themselves really are. It was not thus with former generations of scholars, at home or abroad; nor will it be so much longer with ourselves if we heed those symptoms of reviving interest in sound criticism, to which it is our object now to invite the attention of our readers. If we cannot claim for our subject the popular interest that waits on battles waged, whether at home or abroad, in the council or the field, for causes in which the passions excited are more conspicuous than the principles involved, we may find those who are content to sit apart on the hill of the Muses, in thoughts more elevate. Nor, when we remember that the principles we have to explain affect the condition not only of ancient literature, but of all the books that are the daily bread of our minds, do we despair of obtaining among readers trained in our standard English education an audience fit without being few. It would be foreign to our purpose to re-open the dispute upon the worth of classical learning. We address those who recognize, not only the disciplinary use of linguistic studies, but the importance of knowing thoroughly the public history and polity, and and the private life, the arts, manners, and philosophy, of those nations which have handed down to us, with their civilisation, the undying memory of their noble deeds. But these principles will bear scanty fruit if we are unable to give a definite answer to the plain question-What are the materials of this highlyprized knowledge; what is the subject matter of ancient learning? The remains of antiquity are of two kinds, which we may call monumental and literary. The former comprise the relics of architecture and engineering, sculpture and painting, and minor works of art; the latter, books and inscriptions. The one class of works attest the character and civilisation of their creators by the appeal they make to the sense of fitness, utility, and beauty, common to human nature; the other speak directly to our common human intelligence through the organ of language. To interpret the works of art, to measure, compare, scrutinize, and discuss in journal after journal and memoir after memoir, their minutest details, is confessed to be a task worthy of all the combined skill of the artist and the antiquarian. But when the philologer comes forward to apply the like processes to the words and phrases and rhythms which make up the literary relics of antiquity, he is met with scorn as a trifler; his art is denounced as uncertain in its results; and self-satisfied indolence proclaims that a general knowledge of the language and texts of the ancients. is enough for the perception of their meaning and the enjoyment of their beauties. Let the common rules of a grammar, sound or unsound, be learnt at school; let a lexicon, good or bad, be always at hand, and the self-styled scholar can skim over a corrupt text in ignorant admiration, despising the Dutch drudge who wastes the midnight oil on the hair-splitting subtleties and fruitless conjectures of criticism. And yet it is from these Dutch drudges that we now venture to invite English scholars to learn as our fathers learned, and not to be ashamed to replenish our lamps from the same oil that filled theirs in the first ages of revived learning. The knowledge of the ancient authors has passed through three stages, which the classical student may be excused for symbolizing in imagery likely to be as lasting as it is ancient. First comes the golden age of primeval simplicity, free from all cares of criticism. The destruction of the Byzantine empire by the Turks, in the fifteenth century, drove a multitude of Greeks to seek refuge in the West, bringing with them many a copy of the old Greek authors. Venice offered the fugitives the shelter of an independent republic, whose fleets kept the Mohammedans at bay. From this centre Greek learning spread to the universities of Europe; and, in spite of the adverse faction thence nicknamed Trojans, |