The people were utterly trodden down.  England was the battlefield of Danes, Saxons, and Celts, invaded perpetually, and split up into petty Saxon kingdoms.  The roads were infested with robbers, and agriculture was rude.  The people lived in cabins, dressed themselves in skins, and fed on the coarsest food.  Spain was invaded by Saracens, and the Gothic kingdoms succumbed to these fierce invaders.  Italy was portioned out among different tribes, Gothic and Slavonic.  But the prevailing races in Europe were Germanic (who had conquered both the Celts and the Romans), the Goths in Spain, the Franks and Burgundians in France, the Lombards in Italy, the Saxons in England.

What a commentary on the imperial government of the Caesars!—­that government which, with all its mechanisms and traditions, lasted scarcely four hundred years.  Was there ever, in the whole history of the world, so sudden and mournful a change from civilization to barbarism,—­and this in spite of art, science, law, and Christianity itself?  Were there no conservative forces in that imposing Empire?  Why did society constantly decline for four hundred years, with that civilization which was its boast and hope?  Oh, ye optimists, who talk so glibly about the natural and necessary progress of humanity, why was the Roman Empire swept away, with all its material glories, to give place to such a state of society as I have just briefly described?

And yet men should arise in due time, after the punishment of five centuries of crime and violence, wretchedness and despair, to reconstruct, not from the old Pagan materials of Greece and Rome, but with the fresh energies of new races, aided and inspired by the truths of the everlasting gospel.  The infancy of the new races, sprung however from the same old Aryan stock, passed into vigorous youth when Charlemagne appeared.  From him we date the first decided impulse given to the Gothic civilization.  He was the morning star of European hopes and aspirations.

Let us now turn to his glorious deeds.  What were the services he rendered to Europe and Christian civilization?

It was necessary that a truly great man should arise in the eighth century, if the new forces of civilization were to be organized.  To show what he did for the new races, and how he did it, is the historian’s duty and task in describing the reign of Charlemagne,—­ sent, I think, as Moses was, for a providential mission, in the fulness of time, after the slaveries of three hundred years, which prepared the people for labor and industry.  Better was it that they should till the lands of allodial proprietors in misery and sorrow, attacked and pillaged, than to wander like savages in forests and morasses in quest of a precarious support, or in great predatory hands, as they did in the fourth and fifth centuries, when they ravaged the provinces of the falling Empire.  Nothing was wanted but their consolidation under central rule in order to repel aggressors.  And that is what Charlemagne attempted to do.