uperiority
most incontestable and his power most efficient.

It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies belong
to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West, when he was
invested with all the splendor of sovereign power. Of the 65
Capitularies classed under different heads, 13 only are previous to the
25th of December, 800, the date of his coronation as Emperor at Rome; 52
are comprised between the years 801 and 804.

The energy of Charlemagne as a warrior and a politician having thus been
exhibited, it remains to say a few words about his intellectual energy.
For that is by no means the least original or least grand feature of his
character and his influence.

Modern times and civilized society have more than once seen despotic
sovereigns filled with distrust toward scholars of exalted intellect,
especially such as cultivated the moral and political sciences, and
little inclined to admit them to their favor or to public office. There
is no knowing whether, in our days, with our freedom of thought and of
the press, Charlemagne would have been a stranger to this feeling of
antipathy; but what is certain is that in his day, in the midst of a
barbaric society, there was no inducement to it, and that, by nature, he
was not disposed to it. His power was not in any respect questioned;
distinguished intellects were very rare; Charlemagne had too much need
of their services to fear their criticisms, and they, on their part,
were more anxious to second his efforts than to show, toward him,
anything like exaction or independence. He gave rein, therefore, without
any embarrassment or misgiving, to his spontaneous inclination toward
them, their studies, their labors, and their influence. He drew them
into the management of affairs. In Guizot's _History of Civilization in
France_ there is a list of the names and works of twenty-three men of
the eighth and ninth centuries who have escaped oblivion, and they are
all found grouped about Charlemagne as his own habitual advisers, or
assigned by him as advisers to his sons Pepin and Louis in Italy and
Aquitaine, or sent by him to all points of his empire as his
commissioners, or charged in his name with important negotiations. And
those whom he did not employ at a distance formed, in his immediate
neighborhood, a learned and industrious society, a _school of the
palace,_ according to some modern commentators, but an _academy_ and not
a _school_, accor