a statement made in the Council of Rheims, A. D. 992, that few in Rome knew at that time the elements of literature. But this assertion was gratuitous, and prompted by one of those local jealousies for which the political divisions and quarrels of the time are an explanation. "Nemo repente fuit turpissimus," says Juvenal, and how, therefore, are we to believe that all the learning of the ninth century perished at once and left no progeny. Tiraboschi, a most excellent authority upon this subject, tells us that Ratherius, Bishop of Verona, speaking of Rome at this time, says “that in Rome the sciences still flourished better than elsewhere." The few unfortunate Popes who at that period cast a shadow over the Chair of Peter by their personal delinquencies, did not destroy the light which has always shone around the Capital of Christendom. Otto, Bishop of Vercelli, as well as Ratherius, Bishop of Verona, kept up the reputation of the Church for science and learning. Ratherius died A.D. 974. The study even of Greek literature was not neglected by the Popes, in the very darkest of the so-called dark ages. In the year 816, Pope Stephen IV. founded the monastery of St. Praxedes, and placed in it a congregation of Greek monks, who used their own rite in the celebration of the divine mysteries; and Leo IV. about the same time introduced Greek monks and professors into the monastery of Sts. Stephen and Cassian. Anastasius, the librarian of whom we have already spoken, was an excellent Greek scholar.3

Luitprand, a deacon of the Cathedral of Pavia, afterwards Chancellor of King Berenger II., then a courtier in the palace of the German emperor, Otho I., and finally made by him Bishop of Cremona, a bitter partisan of the German faction, has maligned the Popes of the tenth century, and painted it and them in blacker colors than they really deserve. It is true that the Church was then like an athlete, fatigued by many struggles and many triumphs; it is true that each wave of barbarian invasion, as it broke over Christian Italy, filled its plains with ruin and covered civilization with the lava of ignorance; it is true that the Irish missionaries who evangelized Europe in the sixth century had not completely succeeded in converting the savage hordes of feudal freebooters and brutal peasants of Southern Europe; it is true that Rome and Italy were filled in the 10th century with lords, barons, marquises, counts and princes, each the leader of a faction, struggling for power; armed bandits, like the Norman nobles of the twelfth century, recognizing

1 Storia della Letteratura Italiana. Tom. III. p. 224.

2 The best authority on this subject is Ozanam's admirable work on “Civilization Among the Franks."

3 Muratori, Script. Rer. Ital., Vol. III. P. I. p. 215.

no law but violence, and striving to get control of the Papacy as the recognized central source of power, by which they could have the prestige of law in their favor, although they despised it themselves, and thus intimidate their enemies. Rome, it is true, was rent by these feudal faction fights. A few Popes were intruded by force into the See of Peter. Yet, although these causes delayed the progress of letters, they did not completely extinguish their shining. The monasteries, like busy hives, were silently working, preparing to display all their fruits when the period of confusion should have passed away, when peace should be restored, faction and turbulence be quelled, law resume its sway, and the chair of St. Peter its glory, as it did under the immortal Hildebrand. To the calumnies of Luitprand, the enemy of the Popes, we may oppose the truthful statements of Flodoard, a contemporary writer. He shows that in spite of the dangers to which the papacy was subjected by the struggles of the Italian and German parties to control it for political purposes, it seldom was tarnished by dishonor or ignorance, and that most of the charges made by the Germanizing Luitprand are false. Flodoard's authority is sustained by that of John the Deacon, who was his contemporary, and by Leo Marsicanus, who flourished in the following century. Flodoard lived and wrote in the early part of the tenth century, and was learned and unpartisan. His authority is, therefore, of greater weight than that of Luitprand, who was biassed and wrote at a later date.'

The clouds of the tenth century soon disappeared, when Pope Sylvester II. ascended the Papal throne. This Pope, at one time abbot of the monastery founded at Bobbio by the Irish monks. who had evangelized Gaul in the sixth century, was renowned as a mathematician and musician long before he became Pope. The name of Gerbert, afterwards Sylvester II., will always be an answer to those who accuse the Popes of having been hostile to the cultivation of the natural sciences. There is no longer a doubt about the further development of literary studies. Gregory VII., A.D. 1078, holds a Council at Rome in which all bishops are commanded to open schools, which should be attached to their churches; and the Third General Council of Lateran, held by Alexander III., A.D. 1179, caps the climax of Papal zeal in the cause of education, by ordering that bishops and priests should not only know the sciences becoming to their state, but expressly commands that, in order that the poor shall not remain deprived of the opportunities of learning, in every cathedral church there shall be a master to teach school gratuitously to all poor scholars; and that no one should exact a license fee from any such school-teacher. This regulation was after

1 A noteworthy instance of Luitprand's mendacity is given in the case of Pope Sergius III. Vide Wouter's Hist. Eccl. p. 77, edition of Louvain, 1871.

wards incorporated as a portion of the canon law. When we consider that in those days bishops were more numerous than they are now, and that almost every small city had a cathedral church, we must admit that the people of the early portion of the eleventh century could not have been so badly off for the means of education.

We have seen by the words of the Council of Vaison, already quoted (A.D. 529), that parish schools had been established all over Italy, as early as the fifth century, and this decree of Pope Alexander III. continues the noble tradition of the Papacy in favor of the system. The eleventh century begins the history of the great universities of Europe.'

There were eight General Councils, and a countless number of particular ones held before the eleventh century. The General Councils were filled with Roman scholars, and presided over by Roman legates. Is there one of them whose decrees do not indicate the work of learned men, and of men remarkable even for the graces of style and diction? The particular Councils were inspired from the same source, and had their value only inasmuch as they were sanctioned by the Popes. Hardly one of these Councils but is occupied with questions regarding education and the means to be taken for its advancement. In what, then, were the Popes opposed to literature? How can rulers who make laws for centuries commanding their subjects to found schools and educate the people gratuitously, be considered foes of science?

The Roman Bullarium is an immense work. Volumes are filled with the bulls and briefs and letters of the Roman Pontiffs. Let them be examined, and although we admit that the critic may find in them some evidence of a corrupt taste, owing to the exigencies of the subject and the formulas of the Curia, we are certain that his impartiality will admit them to be masterpieces of learning, of logic, theology, philosophy and style. We do not ask him to read the eloquent Bull of Pius IX. defining the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin; or the last elegantly written encyclical of Leo XIII.; or to peruse the briefs of the classic Leo X.; but we send him back to the days of Leo I., Gregory I., Agapitus, Gelasius, Damasus, Sylvester II., and Gregory VII., for passages of Ciceronian purity and Demosthenic energy.

Even Hallam, who is, in my opinion, a very bigoted author, is obliged to render justice to the fostering care of the Papacy for

1 Speaking of the universities which began their career in the eleventh century, Hallam says: "From this time the Golden Age of Universities commenced; and it is hard to say whether they were favored most by their sovereigns, or by the See of Rome." -Middle Ages, p. 524.

letters: "A continual intercourse was kept up between Rome and the several nations of Europe; her laws were received by the bishops, her legates presided in Councils; so that a common language was as necessary in the Church as it is at present in the diplomatic relations of kingdoms." He gives this and the existence of monasteries as the chief means of preserving the ancient classics from destruction during the early portion of the Middle Ages. The facts which we have given corroborate his opinion. The Popes did indeed preserve literature, and promote and protect its growth and progress. The bright light of Christian literature, from the year 118 to 160,2 when the Christian apologists first made the faith respectable in the eyes of Pagans, by a style and genius equal to their own, grew into the force and splendor of the age of Augustine and Ambrose; and continued to illuminate the world with undiminished power even to the tenth century. Although then partially eclipsed by the surrounding ignorance of quarrelling barbarians, its rays broke through the clouds. It burst out into greater glory in the eleventh century under the reign of the mathematician and Pontiff, Sylvester II., and has continued unclouded from that day to this, through a line of saints and scholars, statesmen, theologians and poets, founders of schools and universities, through Gregory VII., Alexander III., Honorius III., Boniface VIII., Nicholas V., and Sixtus V., from Leo X., the Mæcenas of the sixteenth century, down to the present philosopher and poet, Leo XIII., whose intellectual brows are graced by the tiara, and whose pen is educating the world.

In modern times England had her golden age of literature under Elizabeth; France followed with the age of Louis XIV.; but before them all, and leading the way to all, was the golden age of Papal literature under Leo X. His age was the morning star, the first in the intellectual firmament to tell of the coming apparitions.-"Novissimus exit.”

1 Hallam's Middle Ages, p. 462.

2 Aubé, Histoire des Persecutions de l'Eglise, t. ii.

THE RAPID INCREASE OF THE DANGEROUS
CLASSES IN THE UNITED STATES.

The Dangerous Classes of New York City. By C. L. Brace, New York, 1872.

VERY sincere lover of his country, who has given more

passing attention to the condition of people,

must experience alarm at the general lowering of the moral tone of the whole community, the increase of vice, the decline of commercial honesty and integrity in men intrusted with legislative, judicial, executive, and financial positions.

Looking lower down in the social scale we find the old body of honest yoemen and solid artisans disappearing, and a vast army growing up of men, women, and children even, who constitute a perpetual menace to the wellbeing of society.

These dangerous classes, the cockle sowed while men slept, are growing with such rapidity as to threaten to suffocate the good grain. Dangerous in all countries, these classes are doubly dangerous with us, inasmuch as the men who belong to them are endowed with the right to vote, and surpassing honest electors in numbers or activity, succeed, and will succeed, in placing in the highest offices men at heart as unprincipled and unscrupulous as themselves, though the vice is gilded with the dress, the manners, the religious tone, of even the healthier portion of our community.

Fifty years ago pauperism was almost unknown in America. The cases were isolated, comparatively few, and not apparently hereditary. Now in every State the poorhouses are crowded with inmates, the country swarms with vagrants and those who, disinclined to work, or failing to secure it, swell their numbers. From this school come by the thousand criminals of every kind, only the opportunity and the knowledge being necessary to transform the tramp into the thief, burglar, incendiary, ravisher, or murderer. Every city has its organized gangs, every member of which has committed a series of crimes, all known more or less to the police force, permitted to exist, to thrive, to influence elections, escape indictment,

1 The number of persons who live in crime and make a vocation of some line of criminal life in the city of New York, and in several of the cities of this State, increases more rapidly than the population. "Now it is a fact that the numbers, the fearlessness and the defiant organization of criminals against property have been increasing these several years past in the city of New York." Thirty-second Annual Report of the Prison Association of New York, pp. 92-3. "The increase of crime is shown by the census of the penal institutions to be assuming very serious aspects.” "A statistical summary of the returns from courts of record in the year 1877 shows the important fact that there has been an increase of the classes of crime against property accompanied with violence." Thirty-third Report, p. 6.