ed with
changes in distribution. The centre of population has passed northward
since the establishment of Christianity in the Roman Empire. It
has since passed westward, in consequence of the development of
manufacturing industry.

We may now examine somewhat more minutely the character of the
resistances which thus, for a thousand years, kept the population of
Europe stationary. The surface of the Continent was for the most
part covered with pathless forests; here and there it was dotted with
monasteries and towns. In the lowlands and along the river-courses were
fens, sometimes hundreds of miles in extent, exhaling their pestiferous
miasms, and spreading agues far and wide. In Paris and London, the
houses were of wood daubed with clay, and thatched with straw or reeds.
They had no windows, and, until the invention of the saw-mill, very
few had wooden floors. The luxury of a carpet was unknown; some straw,
scattered in the room, supplied its place. There were no chimneys; the
smoke of the ill-fed, cheerless fire escaped through a hole in the roof.
In such habitations there was scarcely any protection from the weather.
No attempt was made at drainage, but the putrefying garbage and rubbish
were simply thrown out of the door. Men, women, and children, slept
in the same apartment; not unfrequently, domestic animals were their
companions; in such a confusion of the family, it was impossible that
modesty or morality could be maintained. The bed was usually a bag of
straw, a wooden log served as a pillow. Personal cleanliness was utterly
unknown; great officers of state, even dignitaries so high as the
Archbishop of Canterbury, swarmed with vermin; such, it is related, was
the condition of Thomas a Becket, the antagonist of an English king. To
conceal personal impurity, perfumes were necessarily and profusely
used. The citizen clothed himself in leather, a garment which, with its
ever-accumulating impurity, might last for many years. He was considered
to be in circumstances of ease, if he could procure fresh meat once
a week for his dinner. The streets had no sewers; they were without
pavement or lamps. After nightfall, the chamber-shatters were thrown
open, and slops unceremoniously emptied down, to the discomfiture of the
wayfarer tracking his path through the narrow streets, with his dismal
lantern in his hand.

Aeneas Sylvius, who afterward became Pope Pius II., and was therefore a
very competent and impartial writer