saints of the church of York; it is worth reading, as an indication of the intellectual state of the age.

I regret that I am unable to enter more fully into these monuments of a mind so active and distinguished. Some will, perhaps, think I have dwelt too long upon them as it is: for myself, I fear that I have scarcely thrown a glance at them; and if we were to make a profound study of them, we should unquestionably find both profit and pleasure in it: but we must restrict ourselves. To sum up, the following seems to me to be the general character, the intellectual physiognomy of Alcuin and of his works. He is a theologian by profession, the atmosphere in which he lived, in which the public to whom he addresses himself lived, is essentially theological; and yet the theological spirit does not reign alone in him, his works and his thoughts also tend towards philosophy and ancient literature; it is that which he also delights in studying, teaching, and which he wished to revive. Saint Jerome and Saint Augustin are very familiar to him; but Pythagoras, Aristotle, Aristippus, Diogenes, Plato, Homer, Virgil, Seneca, Pliny, also occur to his memory. The greater part of his writings are theological; but mathematics, astronomy, logic, rhetoric, habitually occupy him. He is a monk, a deacon, the light of the contemporaneous church; but he is at the same time a scholar, a classical man of letters. In him, at length, commenced the alliance of these two elements of which the modern mind had so long borne the incoherent impress, antiquity, and the church, the admiration, the taste, the regret, shall I call it, for pagan literature, and the sincerity of Chris tian faith, the zeal to sound its mysteries, and to defend its power.

TWENTY-THIRD LECTURE.

Classification of celebrated men of the age of Charlemagne : 1 Leidrade, archbishop of Lyons-His letter to Charlemagne upon what he has done in his diocese-2. Theodulph, archbishop of Orleans-His measures for the instruction of the people-His poem entitled Exhortation to Judges— 3. Smaragde, abbot of Saint Michael-His treatise of morality for kings, entitled Via Regia — 4. Eginhard - His alleged marriage with a daughter of Charlemagne-Their relations-Of what happened after the death of this prince-His letters-His Life of Charlemagne-Recapitulation.

WHEN I placed before you the view of the celebrated men of the age of Charlemagne, I comprehended therein those who died and those who were born in his reign, his contemporaries, properly so called, and those who long survived him; the former discovered, as it were, and employed by him, the second, formed under his influence: an important distinction if we would justly estimate an epoch and the influence of a man. A sovereign arrives at power in the midst of circumstances, and under the influence of causes, anterior to, and independent of his own will; and which have planted around distinguished men; he gathers them, but he has not made them: his merit consists in knowing how to recognise them, to accept them, to make use of them; but they are not the result of his action; we must not judge of this by them. We have in modern times a striking example of this distinction. Most of the men who constituted the glory of the reign of Louis XIV. were formed entirely independently of him, while the religious struggles still resounded in France, amidst the troubles of the Fronde, and in a liberty which soon vanished. The true fruit of the influence of Louis

XIV. belongs to the last period of his reign; it is the manners and the men of that time which are necessary to be considered in order to judge properly of the effects of his government, and the direction which it impressed upon mind. The distinction is great, and should be well observed.

We shall find no such difference among the men whom Charlemagne found, and those who were formed under him. The latter were in no way inferior to their predecessors, but they were different, and the truth of the distinction which I have pointed out is equally evident.

I spoke in our last lecture of the chief, and, without contradiction, the most distinguished cotemporary of Charlemagne. The men of whom I am about to speak, at least almost all of them, belong to the same epoch, to the same class; like Alcuin, they were not formed by Charlemagne; he discovered and made use of them. Two among them, Leidrade and Theodolf, were, like Alcuin, foreigners; and without Charlemagne, would probably never have appeared in Frankish Gaul.

I. Leidrade was born in the province which the Romans called Norica, situated on the confines of Italy and Germany. He was first attached to Arnon, bishop of Salzburg, and made himself distinguished at an early age by his mind and knowledge. Charlemagne first engaged him as a librarian, and employed him in various missions. The missi dominici, the principal instruments, as you have seen, of his government, were almost all men of this kind, whom he had attracted from all parts, and whom he habitually retained near him, in order to send them, according to need, to inspect some portion of his states, until, sooner or later, he separated from them, conferring upon them some great ecclesiastical or civil charge. It thus happened to Leidrade. After numerous missions, the last of which, in Southern Gaul, prevented him for some time from being consecrated, he was nominated, in 798, archbishop of Lyons. The church of Lyons had always been one of the most considerable of the south of Gaul, and, at the same time, one of those in which disorder had been the greatest, and calculated to give the greatest trouble to repair. It was on this ground, and to satisfy this want, that Charlemagne confided it to Leidrade. A curious monument has come down to us of what the new archbishop did in his

I

diocese. This is a letter in which he himself gives a detailed account to Charlemagne of his labours and their results. will read it entire, despite its emphatic prolixities. It is necessary to bear with them in order to form a true idea of the turn of mind of the age, and the relations of an archbishop with the sovereign. The date of this letter is not exactly known, but it probably belongs to the early years of the ninth century.

"To Charles the Great, Emperor.

"To the powerful Charles, emperor, Leidrade, bishop of Lyons, health. Our lord, perpetual and sacred emperor, I supplicate the clemency of your highness, to hear read this short epistle with a favourable countenance, so that your pious prudence may know what it contains, and that your noble clemency may know the purport of my request. You deigned awhile ago to entrust the government of the church of Lyons to me, the most infirm of your servants, incapable and unworthy of that charge. But since you treat men far less according to their merit, than according to your accustomed bounty, you have acted with me as it has pleased your ineffable piety; and without any title thereto on my part, you have been pleased to charge me with the care of this church, and to act in such a manner that the abuses which have been committed in it may be for the future reformed and avoided. Many things were wanting to this church, both externally and internally, as much in what concerns the holy offices, as for the edifices and other ecclesiastical wants. Listen, therefore, to what I, your very humble servant, have effected in it, since my arrival, with God's aid and yours. The all powerful Lord, who sees into consciences, is my witness, that I do not expose these things in order to draw profit therefrom, and that I have in no way arranged, and communicate this to you in order to procure any advantage to myself, but because I expect each day to leave this life, that because of my infirmities I think myself very near death. I tell you these things to the end that, having attained your benign ear, and being weighed with indulgence, if you think that they have been effected suitably, and according to your will, they may not, after my death, be allowed to languish and perish.

"When, according to your order, I had taken possession of this church, I acted with all my power, with all the strength of

my weakness to bring the ecclesiastical offices to the point at which, with the grace of God, they have nearly arrived. It pleased your piety to grant at my request the restitution of the revenues which formerly belonged to the church of Lyons; by means of which, with God's grace and yours, there has been established in the said church, a psalmody, where is followed, as far as we are able, the ceremonies of the sacred palace, in all that the divine office requires. I have schools of singers, many of whom are already sufficiently instructed to be able to teach others. Moreover, I have schools of readers, who not only acquit themselves of their functions in the church, but who, by meditation on the holy scriptures, assure themselves the fruits of understanding of spiritual things. Some can explain the spiritual sense of the Evangelists; others have understanding of the prophecies; others, of the books of Solomon, the Psalms, and even Job. I have also done in this church what lay in my power, as to copying books. I have likewise procured clothing for the priests, and what was necessary for the offices. I have omitted nothing which lay in my power for the restoration of the churches, so that I have roofed the great church of this town, dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, and I have reconstructed a portion of the walls; I have also repaired the roof of the church of Saint Etienne; I have rebuilt the church of Saint Nizier, and that of Saint Mary, without counting the monasteries and episcopal houses, of which one in particular was almost destroyed, and which I have repaired and re-roofed. I have also constructed another with a high platform. This I have prepared for you, in order that if you come into these parts you may be received there. For the priests, I have constructed a cloister in which they now live all united in one edifice. I have also repaired other churches in this diocese, one of them dedicated to Saint Eulalia, where there is a nunnery dedicated to Saint George; I have had it re-roofed, and part of the walls built up from the foundations; another house in honour of Saint Paul has also been re-roofed. I have entirely repaired the church and house of a nunnery dedicated to Saint Peter, where rests the body of Saint Annemond, martyr, and which was founded by that holy bishop himself. Thirty-two virgins of the Lord now live there under the monastic rule. I have also repaired, by renewing the roof and part of the walls, the royal monastery of l'Isle Barbe; ninety monks now live there under