during proof of his sensibility, and of his possessing
the true spirit of friendship, that, after having relinquished the
thought of his intended visit, he hastened to England, in spite of
increasing impediments, to soothe me by the most generous sympathy,
and to alleviate my domestic affliction; neither his great corpulency
nor his extraordinary bodily infirmities, nor any other consideration,
could prevent him a moment from resolving on an undertaking that might
have deterred the most active young man. He almost immediately, with
an alertness by no means natural to him, undertook a great circuitous
journey along the frontier of an enemy worse than savage, within the
sound of their cannon, within the range of the light troops of the
different armies, and through roads ruined by the enormous machinery
of war."

In this public and private gloom he bade for ever farewell to
Lausanne. He was himself rapidly approaching

"The dark portal,
Goal of all mortal,"

but of this he knew not as yet. While he is in the house of mourning,
beside his bereaved friend, we will return for a short space to
consider the conclusion of his great work.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LAST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL.

The thousand years between the fifth and the fifteenth century
comprise the middle age, a period which only recently, through utterly
inadequate conceptions of social growth, was wont to be called the
dark ages. That long epoch of travail and growth, during which the old
field of civilisation was broken up and sown afresh with new and
various seed unknown to antiquity, receives now on all hands due
recognition, as being one of the most rich, fertile, and interesting
in the history of man. The all-embracing despotism of Rome was
replaced by the endless local divisions and subdivisions of feudal
tenure. The multiform rites and beliefs of polytheism were replaced by
the single faith and paramount authority of the Catholic Church. The
philosophies of Greece were dethroned, and the scholastic theology
reigned in their stead. The classic tongues crumbled away, and out of
their _debris_ arose the modern idioms of France, Italy, and Spain, to
which were added in Northern Europe the new forms of Teutonic speech.
The fine and useful arts took a new departure; slavery was mitigated
into serfdom; industry and commerce became powers in the world as they
had never been before; the narrow municipal polity of the old worl