s the Venerable Bede,
Lanfranc and Anselm, Duns Scotius, William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of
Monmouth (who preserved the legends of Arthur, of King Lear, and
Cymbeline), of Geraldus Cambrensis, of St. Thomas a Kempis, of Matthew
Paris, a Benedictine monk, and of Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar, who
came very near guessing several important truths which have since been
made known to the world by later scholars.

The Bible was protected and cherished from age to age in these
cloisters, where it was, in fact, preserved solely by the labors of the
monks, who translated it by hand, with illuminated border and text.
When a new religious house was opened, it would obtain from some older
monastery a copy of one of these priceless copies of the Sacred
Scriptures; and then this new house in its turn, would set to work to
multiply the number of Bibles, through the labor of its monks and
brothers.

The German translation of the Bible was made in classic High Dutch, and
many later writers have fashioned their style from it, although modern
scholars, Catholic and Protestant, have found many faults in it,
especially whole passages, wherein Luther has erred. This craze for
High Dutch caused the historians of both Denmark and Sweden to utter a
vigorous protest against the influx of High Dutch literature into their
respective countries in the sixteenth century. They averred it was
ruining the native language and literature; but, in spite of this,
Lutheranism got a firm foothold in both these nations.

In the sixteenth century the poetry of all Southern Europe was affected
by the upheaval caused by Luther and his teachings, while in the
Northern countries it was even worse; for, as a great German author
(von Schlegel), has said:

"The old creed could not be driven into contempt without carrying along
with it a variety of images, allusions, poetic traditions and legends,
and modes of composition, all more or less connected with the old
faith."

The struggle that we can trace (in all the works Luther has left) of
his own internal conflict between light and darkness, faith and
passion, God and himself, is a type and indication of what took place
in literature during the Reformation, when the old was in opposition to
the new.

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY.

Eighteenth century philosophy in France, Germany and England was a very
different thing from the philosophy of the Ancients. The latter, says a
profound Germa