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In neither science did the monks excel*. successive deaths of a king of England, and a duke of Austria, each, as it is said, through the ignorance of their medical attendants; and the perpetual complaints respecting dishonesty, bribery, and injustice, in the courts of law, too clearly witness, that the weight of these sciences was too great to be borne by one division (and that a nar. row spirited and fanatic one) of society.

Agriculture.

In this branch of knowledge, the priests* suc

* John of Salisbury, in his Polycraticon, severely lashes the pedantry, vanity, and greediness of his medical contemporaries. Yet, he says, he writes in fear; as he is frequently obliged to be under their care, worthless as they are. At length he takes courage. "Two maxims," he writes, "they never violate; not to regard the poor, and always to take money of the rich."

How justly may the nineteenth century boast, that physicians and surgeons now make as much interest for permission to wait on the poorest and most miserable of their fellow-creatures, collected together in hospitals, as for the most shewy attendance even on the person of the sovereign!

When any singular disease occurred, recourse was frequently had, in the early ages, to Jew physicians, who were supposed to have more knowledge and practical success than their Christian brethren in science. As the practice of physic was very profitable, it tempted the monks to neglect their conventual duty; insomuch, that it was found necessary, at the council of Tours, in 1163, to form a canon, in order to restrain these avaricious ecclesiastics from leaving their convent to act as physicians, more than two months at one time.— Bulai Hist. Un. Parisiensis.

* Sometimes the baron became an enterprising farmer. Richard de Rulos, chamberlain to the first William, drained bogs, enclosed commons, and (after building the significantly-named town of

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ceeded better than in either law or medicine. foreign monks brought many improvements in husbandry from Flanders, Normandy, &c. and with their own hands assisted in putting them in practice. The monk Gervese informs us, that Thomas a Becket condescended to go with his clergy, and assist the neighbours in reaping their corn and housing their hay; and these clerical exertions were thought so meritorious, that a decree in the Lateran council (A. D. 1179) encourages every monk to become a farmer; and holds out to him, while so employed, immunity and protection.

The instruments of husbandry were (according to Strutt, whose observations are made from contemporary drawings) so near to those of the present age in point of form, that any description of them would be totally unnecessary.

The farmers of Scotland, at this time, were apparently some years behind their southern brethren in the study of husbandry; and those of Wales are remarked by Giraldus Cambrensis, to have prepared their land for wheat in a different method from that adopted in England; to have used a sickle that had two wooden handles; and to have made the driver of their ploughs walk backward, while guiding his horses.

Gardening improved by the Normans.

THE art of gardening received considerable imDeeping, in Lincolnshire) changed the banks of the Welland from quagmires to gardens and orchards.-Henry from Ingulphus.

provement from the Normans; particularly with respect to the culture of the vine, which, according to W. Malmsbury, had, in his time, arrived to such perfection within the vale of Gloucester, that a sweet and palatable wine, "little inferior to that of France," was made there in abundance.

Woollen Cloths improved in England, &c. THE very necessary art of making woollen cloth (introduced or at least highly improved in England by colonies of Flemings) seems to have flourished more in the eleventh and twelfth centuries than in those immediately succeeding: this may be reasonably accounted for by the civil wars, which desolated the island, and ruined every species of commerce and manufacture under Stephen, John, and Henry the Third.

And here, in justice to our sister island, we must not omit to bring forward the testimony of an Italian poet and traveller, Fazio degli Uberti,' who, in his "Ditta Mondi," thus records the serges or says of Ireland, at the beginning of the fourteenth century :

"Similimente passamo in Irlanda,

La qual fra noi è digna di fama
Per le nobile saie che ci manda."

Which is imitated as follows :—

"To Ireland then our sails we raise;

Ireland, which merits well our praise,
By sending us its noble says."

The dictionary Della Crusca speaks of Irish says;

and Madox and Rymer are not silent concerning the friezes, and other woollen manufactures of Ireland in the time of Henry III. and Richard II. These circumstances give to the Irish the priority of a steady woollen manufacture.-Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy.

The Patrons of Poetry and Music, in the 11th and . 12th Centuries.

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If poetry did not flourish about this time, it seems not to have failed for want of patronage. Saxon Matilda, queen to Henry Beauclerc, was, as we are told by W. of Malmsbury, a generous and even profuse protectress of poets. Longchamp, the favourite minister of Richard Cœur de Lion, kept many bards in his pay, (as Benedict the abbot writes,) and even allured minstrels from France to enliven the streets of London by their songs; and Richard himself was the most liberal of patrons to poets, minstrels, &c. The works, however, which met with such encouragement from people of rank, were probably written in the Norman or French languages.

Music, like her sister Poetry, was much cherished by the first Anglo-Normans, and the minstrels, in particular, were so much favoured, that the Saxon Matilda is said, by W. of Malmsbury, to have expended her treasures upon them; and even to have oppressed her tenants, in order to raise sums of money to reward them. But it was

church-music that was most steadily attended to. The great advantages attendant on the discoveries of Guido Aretin* (which made the science comparatively easy) were for some time solely appropriated to sacred uses; and the frequent intercourse between the English prelates and the papal metropolis, occasioned every improvement to be easily transplanted from Italy to Britain. Accordingly, the enervating graces of Italy had made such progress in little more than a hundred years, that John of Salisbury styles the English music of his day, "effeminaté;" and says, that "it has debased the dignity, and stained the purity of religious worship."

Sculpture and Painting.

UNDER the extensive protection of superstition, sculpture flourished in the ages we now examine. The patron saint, at least, adorned every church; and in the cathedral and conventual edifices, images abounded.

We know but little of this ingenious monk, except that he was a native of Arezzo, in Italy. Even the laborious Bayle can tell us nothing of his history. He only denies his having written against the arch-heretic Berengarius. The discovery was surely great, and the good priest had at least an adequate idea of its consequence; for in a letter to the pope, he not only affirms that one year's attention to the science of music will now equal the proficiency gained before by ten years' labour, which is probably true enough; but he also intimates his persuasion, that, by this happy thought, (inspired, as he believes, from heaven,) " he had atoned for all his sins, and seccured the salvation of his soul."-Baronius.