Both the crown and the barons were sufficiently ready each of them to employ the lower orders against the other. Consequence was therefore given to this oppressed race of men, and immunities and privileges afforded to them, more particularly in the towns and cities. The result was commerce, which again added to the consequence they had before acquired.

As the towns and cities were on various accounts materially leagued with the crown, the power of the barons was thus on the whole assaulted from without.

But it was also attacked and wasted from within. A taste was gradually introduced for the more elegant and expensive enjoyments of life, and the barons could not spend their revenues on themselves, and at the same time on their retainers at once on articles of luxury and in rude hospitality. The number of their retainers was therefore diminished; that is their power and political importance. The whole subject has been admirably explained by Smith in his third book of the Wealth of Nations, and I depend on your reading it; leaving here a blank in my lectures, which you must yourselves fill up. It would be an improper use of your time to offer you here, in an imperfect manner, what can be afforded you, and far better afforded you, by the study of this very masterly part of his celebrated work.

A great part of Smith's reasonings had appeared in the history of Hume. These two eminent philosophers (for on the subjects of political economy and morals they deserve the name) had no doubt, in their mutual intercourse, enlightened and confirmed the inquiries and conclusions of each other.

The Crusades are considered by authors in general, and by Dr. Robertson, as a powerful cause of the improvement of society. You will see his reasons; and you will observe that Smith conceives, that from the great waste and destruction of people and of capital, they must rather have retarded the progress of the greater part of Europe, though favourable to some Italian cities.

You will perceive also that Gibbon agrees with Smith.

But the question is, whether the stock and population thus transported to Palestine, would have been turned to any proper purposes of accumulation or improvement, if left to remain

at home. At the close of his remarks on this subject, Mr. Gibbon appears to me to have determined this question, not, a little against himself, by a very beautiful illustration, which he offers to his reader, after the manner of the great orator of antiquity; an illustration which at once conveys an image to the fancy and an argument to the understanding. "The conflagration," says he, "which destroyed the tall and barren. trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the nutritive plants of the soil;" that is, the Crusades destroyed the feudal lords, and brought forward the middle and lower orders.

Another cause of the improvement of society was the fortune, whatever it might be, by which the crown became, in the great kingdoms of Europe, hereditary.

The royal power was thus rendered always ready to gain whatever could be lost; to proceed from one accession to another, and to be the great and permanent reservoir into which the feudal authority had constantly a tendency to flow.

I have before observed that the power was less injurious, thus collected, than when indefinitely multiplied and exhibited in the person of any baron; and that there was a probability that the commons would receive their share in the course of the transfer.

With respect to the causes which shook the ecclesiastical power of Rome, the second great evil of society, they may be comprised in two words, that at this period of the world were of kindred nature-Heresy and Knowledge.

The gradual progress of these causes, and their final success, may be hereafter considered. The student may, however, look upon either of them whenever it appears in the history of these times, as the symptom and harbinger of the subsequent reformation.

Ignorance and superstition are naturally allied; their cause is common, their friends and enemies the same. The opposers of a barbarous philosophy are soon entangled in the misapprehensions and corruptions of an abused religion; the spirit of inquiry which struggles with the one is immediately suspected of a secret hostility to the other. The student, as he proceeds in his historical course, will soon be called on to observe the Albigenses, the Lollards, and the Hussites, with

our earlier sages and philosophers exhibiting amid the chains and dungeons of the inquisition or of the civil power, the melancholy grandeur of persecuted truth, and insulted genius.

These first but unfortunate luminaries of Europe were, however, not lost to the world: the Reformation and the revival of learning at last took place; the pillar of light continued to march before mankind in their journey through the darkness of the desert, and it was in vain that the oppressor would have prevented their escape from their houses. of bondage, or denied them the possession of the promised land of religion, liberty, and knowledge.

I conclude this general subject with observing, that the Crusades, while they so happily dispersed the possessions and influence of the great lords, and therefore so materially assisted the progress of society, contributed to the influence. of the clergy, and that in the most unfavourable manner, by furnishing them with relics and miracles, and with new and multiplied modes of extending and confirming the superstition of the age; but I must at the same time remark, once for all, that the power, which the clergy enjoyed, was not always exercised to the injury of society; in many most important respects materially otherwise. They shook the power of the barons by contriving to draw within their own jurisdiction the disputes and causes which had belonged to the feudal courts -they had always kept alive in society whatever knowledge, amid such rapine and disorder, could be suffered to existthey were the instructors of youth-they were the historians of the times-they maintained in existence the Latin language they were the only preservers of the remains of Greek and Roman literature-they every where endeavoured to mitigate and abolish slavery-they were the most favourable landlords to the peasantry; to the lower orders the mildest. masters-they laboured most anxiously and constantly to soften and abolish the system of private war by establishing truces and intermissions, and by assisting the civil magistrate on every possible occasion-they were every where in those times of violence, a description of men whose habits and manners were those of peace and order-they could not profess such a religion as Christianity without dispensing amidst all their misrepresentations, the general doctrines of

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purity and benevolence, and without being, in a word, the representatives of what learning and civilization, moderation and mercy, were yet to be found. These were great and

transcendent merits.

That their power was inordinate, and that they abused it most grossly, is but too true: a strong proof, if any were wanting, that power should be always suspected, and should be checked and divided by every possible contrivance. In this instance it was capable of converting into the rulers, and often into the tyrants of the earth, men who breathed the precepts of meekness and lowliness of heart, and who continually affirmed that their kingdom was not of this world.

Such are the general views which I have been enabled to form of the situation and prospects of society during these middle ages, and such are the writers on whom I have depended for instruction, and to whose labours I must now finally refer you.

But before I conclude my lecture, I must make a particular remark. It cannot have escaped your observation how often I have mentioned the historian Gibbon; how much I leave entirely to depend upon him; the manner in which I refer to him as the fittest writer to supply you with information in all the earlier stages of modern history, and, indeed, as the only writer that you are likely to undertake to read; add to this, that I have already had occasion, and shall often hereafter have occasion, to mention his history in terms either of admiration or respect.

Yet I cannot be supposed ignorant of the very material objections which exist to this History; and I am certainly not at ease in recommending those parts of the work which I do approve, while I know there is so much both in the matter and manner of the whole, and of every part of it, which I cannot approve.

I am, therefore, necessitated to make some observations on this celebrated writer, unfavourable as well as favourable, and this I must do with a minuteness disproportionate to all unity and keeping in the composition of general lectures like these. I am compelled to do so, by the nature of the audience I am addressing, and by the fame of the author.

In the chapters which I in the first lecture referred to, the

faults of this great historian do not appear. In the earlier part of his work he respected the public, and was more diffident of himself. Success produced its usual effects; his peculiar faults were more and more visible as his work advanced, and in his later volumes he seems to take a pride, as is too commonly the case among men of genius, in indulging himself in liberties which he would certainly have denied to others. And as the powers of the writer strengthened, as he went on, and kept pace with his disposition to abuse them, the History of the Decline and Fall became at last a work so singularly constituted, that the objections to it are too obvious to escape the most ordinary observer, while its merits are too extensive and profound to be fully ascertained by the most learned of its admirers.

These faults will only be the more deeply lamented by those, who can best appreciate such extraordinary merits. Men of genius are fitted by their nature not only to instruct the understanding, but to fill the imagination and interest the heart. It is mournful to see the defects of their greatness; it is painful to be checked in the generous career of our applause. With what surprise and disgust are we to see in such a writer as Gibbon the most vulgar relish for obscenity! With what pain are we to find him exercising his raillery and sarcasm on such a subject as Christianity! How dearly shall we purchase the pleasure and instruction to be derived from his work, if modesty is to be sneered away from our minds, and piety from our feelings! There seems no excuse for this celebrated writer on these two important points: he must have known, that some of the best interests of society are connected with the respectability of the female character; and with regard to his chapters on the progress of Christianity, and the various passages of attack with which hist work abounds, it is in vain to say, that, as a lover of truth, he was called upon to oppose those opinions, which he deemed erroneous; for he was concerned, as an historian, only with the effects of this religion, and not with its evidences; with its influence on the affairs of the world, not with its truth or falsehood.

It would be to imitate the fault, to which I object, were I now to travel out of my appointed path, and attempt to