Note 4 — Chapter I

M. Guizot confirms me in a conclusion to which I had previously come, that the seventh century is the nadir of the human mind in Europe, and that its movement in advance began before the end of the next, or, in other words, with Charlemagne. Hist. de la Civilisation en France, ii. 345. A notion probably is current in England, on the authority of the older writers, such as Cave or Robertson, that the greatest darkness was later; which is true as to England itself. It was in the seventh century that the barbarians were first tempted to enter the church, and obtain bishoprics, which had, in the first age after their invasion, been reserved to Romans. Fleury, p. 18.