survey of general conditions and practice in classical teaching and study, a survey which he has already so successfully instituted and conducted. The other department, under the head of "Current Events," will present everything that is properly newsoccurrences from month to month, meetings, changes in faculties, performances of various kinds, etc. This department will be under the charge of four associate editors who will have each his separate field, and who will together cover the whole field. These fields as outlined will be as follows: (1) the territory covered by the Associations of New England and the Atlantic States; (2) the Middle States west to the Mississippi River; (3) the Southern States, and (4) the territory west of the Mississippi, exclusive of Louisiana and Texas.

VIRGIL, AND THE TRANSITION FROM ANCIENT TO

MODERN LITERATURE'

BY FRANCES J. HOSFORD
Oberlin, Ohio

The last quarter of the fifth century and the sixth century after Christ saw endings and beginnings which may be compared only to the great upheavals of the geologic ages. In 476 Rome, plundered, humbled, helpless in the hands of the northern barbarians, gave up the fiction of sovereignty, and sent the robe of imperial purple to Constantinople. Soon Theodoric, another and a more enlightened Ostrogoth, conquered the conqueror of Rome, but perhaps the most far-reaching result of his splendid reign was the establishment of the monasteries of Cassiodorus at Squilace, and of St. Benedict at Monte Cassino-the initial step of the mediaeval type of monasticism. It was in 529 that St. Benedict first gathered his monks about him in his new retreat at Monte Cassino, upon the site of an ancient temple to Apollo. That was a noteworthy year for the passing of the old as well as for the coming of the new, for it was in 529 that Justinian closed the School of Athens. The brilliant victories of Justinian's general, Belisarius, only served to prove the desperate case of the old civilization, and pestilence completed the work of barbarism. Between them, they changed the whole face of Europe. And straightway the Lombards, fiercest and most ruthless of the northern hordes, were to sweep away Roman and Ostrogoth alike, to end the shadowy remains of imperial power at Ravenna, and to overthrow the Greek cities of southern Italy. When Antharis, son of Cleph, swept the peninsula like a tornado, and, at the southern extreme of Italy, had urged his warhorse into the salt waves, then throwing his spear as far as his mighty arm could hurl it, proclaimed, "This is the end of the power of the Lombards," that moment was indeed the "consummation of the ages." As the Roman knew this planet, it might well be described as the "end of the world."

Read before the Latin Club of Columbus, Ohio, February 26, 1910.

Who were these barbarians who thus trampled beneath their feet the splendid result of centuries of human effort? We can only guess what wild fens, what frozen steppes, or interminable forests gave them birth, and trained muscles of iron and souls of even sterner stuff. The Huns, with their broad cheekbones and cruel, featureless faces, came and again returned upon their desolated track. But the Germans stayed-men of gigantic stature, with flaxen hair and fierce blue eyes. They were so masterful that as Visigoths in Spain they made the term "blue-blooded" synonymous with hereditary leadership, and so ruthless that as Vandals in Italy and Africa they gave their name to every species of wanton destructiveness. They burned and razed with the power of gods and the ignorance of children. The implements of the higher culture were the most worthless of their playthings. Books made a bonfire, easy to light. Marble statues had a certain value, for they would go into the limekiln better than blocks from the quarry. Bronzes could be melted for armor or weapons, while every artistic object in gold or silver was eagerly sought, to be remolded into their clumsy ornaments or primitive media of exchange.

When we remember how many successive waves of destruction swept over Europe, the marvel is, not that so much of the old culture was lost, but that anything remained, for after all, the classic civilization is the foundation upon which is built much that is best and most enduring in our modern life. How is it that it did not pass away, as did the civilizations of Assyria and Phoenicia, to be resurrected only by the toil of the specialist, and to remain quite without significance to our times?

The connecting link was the Christian church, as it gradually took upon its primitive simplicity the form of Roman Catholicism. Persecuted in the days of the Empire's splendor, flourishing in its decadence, the church came to absorb into its bosom the Roman genius for organization and government. The glory of Roman dominion did not fade. It passed from temporal to spiritual. The church conquered the conquerors of the civilized world. It met fire and sword with the symbol of the cross, and blood-stained warriors paused in their work of destruction, and, kneeling before unarmed priests, craved the rite of baptism. It did not make these wild

fighters of the North into men of peace. But it won from them the concession that certain persons, certain places, certain times should be sacred. It made it possible for the scholar, the devotee, the sensitive and timid soul, to find a haven in the cloister; and, making common cause, perforce, with its old enemy, it saved the pagan literature.

When we scan the confusing records of that fearful sixth century, we study the exploits of Belisarius and Narses, only to find in them a wholly futile attempt to stem the tide of barbarism. How many of us note that, while Belisarius was still fighting the Persians for Justinian, the monasteries of Squilace and Monte Cassino were established, and that here, not upon the tented field, the best of the old civilization was to be preserved? Least of all did the founders of these retreats know what they did. Silence, humility, and obedience, these were the three virtues of the Benedictine discipline. The three occupations were worship, manual labor, and the reading of devotional literature. But several reasons combined to lead the monks to the careful study and diligent copying of the Latin classics. Idleness was early recognized as the bane of monastic life, and the chief opportunity of the arch-tempter. They turned to agriculture, and the monks became the first farmers of mediaeval Europe. But crops cannot be raised in the winter, and all are not equally fitted to follow the plough. An indoor occupation must be found, and the readiest to the hand was the copying of manuscripts. Then, as the old culture receded, as spoken Latin became unintelligible, as the diction of Cicero passed into a multitude of local dialects, devout men knew that they must save the Latin language, or lose touch with the Scriptures, in the form of the Latin Vulgate, the writings of the Fathers, and the services of the church. So schools must be established, and the old literature, through which alone the language could be approached, must be preserved by copying. Sometimes the scribe wrote an execration upon the margin of a gross heathen passage, to show the pious horror with which he shrank from his task. Sometimes he lingered over the tales of Carthage and of Troy with a delight that was half against his conscience. Sometimes he was pure pagan at heart, even if Christian in belief, and, safe in the monastery from the hateful outside world of terror and pillage, he found his true life amid these gracious reminders of a calmer, a more ordered, and a

more beautiful society. Or, again, he copied like a machine, ignorant and careless of any real import to his task. The work was by no means constant in quality or value. The influence of one scholarly superior might be felt in the scriptoria of a dozen monasteries. A period of ignorant oversight or lax discipline would result in the loss of the choicest treasures. But for all that, the manuscripts were copied copied while roving chiefs became princes of states-copied while their semblance of civilization was, in turn, swept away by fresh hordes of barbarians-copied while half-savage feudal chiefs ruled with iron hand over their wretched dependents-copied while the crusading frenzy swept men and even children into its path of disillusion and death. The eastern Empire, safe for the time by reason of its strategic site, became more and more isolated from the desolated West. Greek came to be an unknown tongue, even to the great scholars of Europe. The Byzantine scribes preserved the Greek literature, and the time of the revival of Greek scholarship was to come, and come gloriously. But for all the classic inspiration which reached our forefathers during the early formative years. of their national life we are indebted to the Latin literature, as preserved by the scribes of the monasteries of the West.

Well may the imagination love to dwell upon those isles of peace amid the storm-tossed sea of the Dark Ages. Often situated amid scenes of the greatest natural beauty, those quiet cells, those fair cloistered gardens must have breathed of the very peace of God to the sensitive souls that shrank from war's carnage. It was an expensive haven, and we shall never know how much of finest strain was bred out of European races by the stern process of selection that made monks and nuns out of all the gentle and the thoughtful. Perhaps the great philosophies of India may show us what all the Aryan races should have accomplished in abstract thought. But even so, Europe had a refuge when the outside world grew too bitter, and she has never produced a race of thinkers who have learned to cringe or to despair.

Of all the purely literary classic authors, Virgil was by far the most popular and influential throughout the Middle Ages. Various reasons led to this result. First, so far as the scribes had any definite purpose in their labors, it was to save the schools, and Virgil has