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divided, how much more so, when considered as united and blended together in one houshold! There we behold the old and young linked together, comforting themselves, strengthening and edifying one another, in the holy bands of brotherly love, natural affection, and Christian charity. They pray together, and for one another. Together they read the Scriptures: and they are glad to repair together to the house of the Lord, in search of needful help, and to declare his goodness and mercy to the children of men. They bear one another's burdens. They weep together, and rejoice together; and live together in unity: and their prayer is, that after they are once torn asunder here and divided, they may all be found worthy in the end to meet again together in heaven, a happy family, no more to part, even unto everlasting; receiving the end of their faith the salvation of their souls. --So indeed it shall be, through his might who is gone before. And this is the perfect consummation in bliss of a holy family." Vol. II. P. 399.

From the extracts which we have thus given, the reader will be enabled to form a very fair estimate of what he is to expect in these two volumes. No man is better acquainted with the lives and writings of the fathers of our English Church than Dr. Wordsworth, as his Ecclesiastical Biography will bear a very convincing testimony. From the frequent study of these great masters in theology, in many passages he has insensibly fallen into their style, and presents not unfrequent specimens. sometimes of their native beauties, and occasionally of their quaintness and embarrassment. But notwithstanding this, the style of these Sermons may be pronounced both simple and energetic, and they may be considered as admirably calculated to promote the end for which they were designed. We trust that they will frequently be resorted to by those among the clergy, whose severe and constant duty renders it necessary for them occasionally to adopt the labours of others. Wherever these Sermons are either read or preached, they cannot fail exciting those scriptural feelings, and of producing those beneficial effects, which it is the great end of their learned author to promote.

ART. II. A Literary History of the Middle Ages, compre hending an Account of the State of Learning from the Close of the Reign of Augustus to its Revival in the Fifteenth Century. By the Rev. Joseph Berington. 4to. 728 pp. Mawman.

1814.

THIS is a work of no inconsiderable merit; and, though the subject may be regarded nearly as exhausted by writers of foreign

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Countries as well as of our own, and the merit of Mr. Berington to be very little more than to have collected under one view all the materials which lay scattered amongst many books of different Janguages, yet this merit, small as it may seem, deserves the highest degree of praise. Without difficulty or expence, the reader has now become possessed of a satisfactory account of the fall and revival of learning; without perusing hundreds of volumes, he may now be acquainted with the thoughts of the masters who have written on the subject; by sound philosophy, he is led to investigate the causes which produced those astonishing phenomena, he may witness the decay and follow the progress of the human mind; and by seeing for how long we have been preceded by foreigners, and how much we have profited by their Jabours, he may divest himself of some of the many prejudices so inherent in the mind of an Englishman.-Too justly prepossessed in favour of some of our best institutions, our countrymen carry this predilection at times a little too far; and, like a Chinese, they regard with contempt the best institutions of foreign countries, and with admiration even the absurdity of their own. To these merits Mr. Berington adds another, and that is of not having given to his book either a preface or a dedication. By leaving out the first, he has taken upon himself much of that Jabour which our fashionable authors, in their rage of preface writing, generally leave to their reader; and by ushering his work into the world without a dedication, he is at least absolved from the censure of choosing an unworthy patron.

Our author has divided the whole period of the middle ages, from Augustus to the fifteenth century, into six epochs.

In the first, he comprises a period of nearly five hundred years, that is, from the end of the reign of Augustus to the fall of the western empire in the year 476.

In the second, he embraces the succeeding period of about three hundred years, from the fall of the western empire to the beginning of the reign of Charlemagne, in the year 774.

The third epoch ends with the tenth century.

The eleventh and the twelfth century form the subject of the fourth epoch.

The thirteenth century is treated in the fifth; and the whole of the fourteenth, and the first part of the fifteenth century, to the invention of the art of printing, is comprised in the sixth.

To each of these epochs Mr. Berington has dedicated a book, to which he has added two appendices; one on the learning of the Greeks from the sixth century to the fall of the empire in the East, in the year 1453; and the second, on the Arabian or Saracenic learning. In all of them he endeavours to give to the reader a complete idea of the state of literature and sciences,

points out the causes which have concurred to hasten or retard their progress; mentions the most celebrated men who have seve rally flourished amongst the different nations during the different ages, and without giving a biographical detail of the whole of their lives so nearly the same, and so uninteresting to a philosophical reader, he records merely those events which have given a bias to their writings, of which, in general, he gives a tolerable and fair criticism; and what is more, though a member of the catholic communion, he does not disguise the errors, the crimes, and the usurpations of the different pontiffs who have sat on the chair of St. Peter. For this reason we are very willing to give him ample credit, especially at the present moment, when this visible head of the Roman Catholic Church is endeavouring with all his might to bring matters back to the same level of superstition, intolerance, and bigotry in which they were enveloped during the dark and turbulent ages, which form the subject of his book.

This division, in point of matter and time, is very just; it is the same which has been adopted by Tiraboschi and by Andres, two favorite authors with Mr. Berington; and indeed it is almost the only one which has been followed by all the writers who have treated the same subject of literature: however, we were not a little startled at the following clause, in the very opening of the book.

"I have somewhere seen an opinion hazarded, that it would have been well for the state of man, had Carthage triumphed, and the Roman power been subdued. It has been supposed that, compared with that of the sword, the spirit of commerce is mild and beneficent; that, acting under the influence of this spirit, Carthage would have respected the rights of nations, and have promoted, as herself interested in the event, their greater prosperity; that by her, nautical science would have been advanced, and new regions discovered, by which a more early and general intercourse would have taken place amongst nations, the condition of mankind would have been improved, and the arts of peace more generally cultivated. The theory is pleasing, but it is not in unison with the conduct of com mercial nations. Their spirit is less often mild and beneficent, than selfish, rapacious, and mercenary. For them letters have few charms; and the culture of the nobler arts is apt to be neglected in the pursuit of sordid pelf." P. 5,

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In delivering this opinion, our author manifestly joins together two things of a very different nature, the spirit of commerce and the culture of literature and arts. It may be that the spirit of merchant in a commercial nation may be often selfish, rapacious and mercenary; it may also be, that by this individual, the culture of the nobler arts, and the pursuits of literature, may be often Reglected in the pursuits of gain; but is a nation to be judged by

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the avarice of an individual? In this condemnation of the spirit of commerce, our author takes for granted the very main point of the question; he considers a commercial nation as if composed entirely of merchants, and all these merchants as having the same disposition to low and sordid habits, without the least taste for literature and arts. But this is to mistake the cause for the effects; it is to suppose luxurious indolence inseparable from commerce, and to consider a commercial nation as necessarily corrupt. Now in this nation, the same spirit of industry which gives an impulse to commerce, extends itself also to literature, and forms the best encouragement both of sciences and scientific .men. This we should conceive to have been the case with all nations, both ancient and modern; and particularly with the Egyptians, the Athenians, the Venetians, and the Florentines *. Nay, we may go still further, and assert, that to a commercial intercourse with foreign nations, modern Europe owes the beginning of her freedom, and the abolition of the feudal system, the only advantage which the mania of the crusades ever conferred upon mankind. Had Carthage indeed triumphed over Rome, we might with much reason believe that the condition of man, kind would have been improved much earlier, and the arts of peace more generally cultivated, whatever our author may think to the contrary.

In speaking of the causes which produced the fall of learning in ancient Rome, Mr. Berington follows the plan of Tiraboschi, and, like him, subdivides this first epoch from the death of Augustus to the fall of the western empire, into three periods. The first ends with the reign of Adrian; the second reaches Constantine; and the third the year 476.

During the first period, Mr. Berington considers the decline of learning as the effect of the destruction of liberty; during the second as arising from want of imperial encouragement; and

*The learned biographer of Lor. de Medici has given us a description of the Florentines during the eleventh and twelfth century, which may serve to illustrate our doctrine. "The fatigues of public life," says he in a note, "and the cares of mercantile avocations, were alleviated at times by the study of literarature, or the speculations of philosophy. A rational and dignified employment engaged those moments of leisure not necessarily devoted to more important concerns, and the mind was relaxed without being debilitated, and amused without being depraved. The superiority which the Florentines thus acquired, was universally acknowledged; and they became the historians, the poets, the orators, and the preceptors of Europe."

Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de Medici, Vol. I. P. 10.

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in the third, which though treated to a greater length, is by no means so clear, he appears to attribute this decline to the removal of the seat of the empire from Rome to Constantinople; and afterwards to the invasions of the different barbarians. though there may be much justice and truth in ascribing to these causes a part of the consequences, yet we cannot but think that in all three periods, some other points must be taken into consideration to account for the effects. In following Tiraboschi, we fear Mr. Berington has overlooked history, and has taken ipse dixit for a mathematical demonstration*, which often imposes upon the reader the obligation of adopting the opinions of an author, without examining their solidity. In a work, indeed, of this species, these faults are by no means easy to be discovered, so much do they resemble the most uncontrovertible truths. But first of all let us hear Mr. Berington himself.

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"A little more than a hundred years had elapsed, for Adrian died in 138; and if learning, during so short a period, as we shall soon see, had sensibly declined, want of liberty rather than want of imperial encouragement was the cause. The great men in the age Augustus had received the first impulse to their genius before the destruction of the republic; and the effects of the spirit of liberty, in some degree, remained after the ancient constitution had degenerated into an absolute monarchy. When suspicion was universally excited, the character alone of being learned could hardly fail to awaken jealousy; and the annals of the times have recorded the names of many eminent scholars, who became the victims of a tyrant's fears. A sensitive timidity, rather than a robust hardihood of character, is too often the result of solitary application; and to that timidity may be ascribed the adulatory baseness, by which the writings of many authors at that time were disgraced. Velleius Paterculus did not blush to praise Tiberius, and his band of cour tiers; nor Quintilian to extol even the genius of Domitian. Under such leaders, the political and judicial constitution of the empire became a prey to every assailant, whilst internal discord, vitiated manners, and an unbounded luxury, gave new strength to the wast→, ing force of profligacy and corruption." P. 9.

"But how, it may be asked, could that taste, which was formed' on the best models of excellence, thus rapidly degenerate? Without endeavouring to scrutinize the various causes of this event, I will merely observe that, in addition to the injudicious choice of a new road to excellence, and the instability of all human attainments, Rome had not, at this time, the same incitements to the ambition of

* In differing with Mr. Berington, we differ from him with the respect due to a man of learning; and in recording his errors, we' consider ourselves as paying him the compliment of considering him of that importance.

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