Napoleon professed a great admiration for Charlemagne, although Frederic II. was his model sovereign.  But how differently Napoleon acted in this respect!  Napoleon was jealous of literary genius.  He hated literary men.  He rarely invited them to his table, and was constrained in their presence.  He drove them out of the kingdom even.  He wanted nothing but homage,—­and literary genius has no sympathy with brute force, or machinery, or military exploits.  But Charlemagne, like Peter the Great, delighted in the society of all who could teach him anything.  He was a tolerably learned man himself, considering his life of activity.  He spoke Latin as fluently as his native German, and it is said that he understood Greek.  He liked to visit schools, and witness the performances of the boys; and, provided they made proficiency in their studies, he cared little for their noble birth.  He was no respecter of persons.  With wrath he reproved the idle.  He promised rewards to merit and industry.

The most marked feature of his reign, outside his wars, was his sympathy with the clergy.  Here, too, he differed from Napoleon and Frederic II.  Mr. Hallam considers his alliance with the Church the great error of his reign; but I believe it built up his throne.  In his time the clergy were the most influential people of the Empire and the most enlightened; but at that time the great contest of the Middle Ages between spiritual and temporal authority had not begun.  Ambrose, indeed, had rebuked Theodosius, and set in defiance the empress when she interfered with his spiritual functions; and Leo had firmly established the Papacy by emphasizing a divine right to his decrees.  But a Hildebrand and a Becket had not arisen to usurp the prerogatives of their monarchs.  Least of all did popes then dream of subjecting the temporal powers and raising the spiritual over them, so as to lead to issues with kings.  That was a later development in the history of the papacy.  The popes of the eighth and ninth centuries sought to heal disorder, to punish turbulent chieftains, to sustain law and order, to establish a tribunal of justice to which the discontented might appeal.  They sought to conserve the peace of the world.  They sought to rule the Church, rather than the world.  They aimed at a theocratic ministry,—­to be the ambassadors of God Almighty,—­to allay strife and division.

The clergy were the friends of order and law, and they were the natural guardians of learning.  They were kindness itself to the slaves,—­for slavery still prevailed.  That was an evil with which the clergy did not grapple; they would ameliorate it, but did not seek to remove it.  Yet they shielded the unfortunate and the persecuted and the poor; they gave the only consolation which an iron age afforded.  The Church was gloomy, ascetic, austere, like the cathedrals of that time.  Monks buried themselves in crypts; they sang mournful songs; they saw nothing but poverty and misery, and they