aimed at overturning the throne, and exercised the severest oppression on all their dependants. The interests, therefore, of the people, no less than the security of the prince, demanded the repression of this overbearing and destructive power. The aristocracy was however preserved, no less by its own strength than by the concurrence of circumstances, and chiefly by the violent and unhappy fate of the [later] sovereigns. Meantime, although the measures they pursued were not successful, their consequences were beneficial. They restrained, if they did not destroy, the spirit of feudal oppression, and gave birth to order, wise laws, and a more tranquil administration of government. 2. The legislative power, though originally resident in the parliament, [became latterly] virtually in the king, who, by his influence, entirely controlled its proceedings. [Burgesses, the representatives of the towns, were first admitted into the Scottish parliaments by Robert Bruce in 1326, which then consisted of three estates, the nobles (the greater barons), and the lesser barons, the dignified clergy, and the representatives of the towns. In 1427 the lesser barons were exempted from attendance in parliament, when two or more commissioners of shires were annually elected by the freeholders to represent them. The Scottish parliament was never divided, as in England, into two houses, but composed one assembly.] The disposal of benefices gave the crown the entire command of the churchmen in parliament, who equalled the nobles in number; and at least a majority of the commons were the dependants of the sovereign. A committee, termed the Lords of the Articles, prepared every measure that was to come before the parliament, and these, by the mode of their election, were in effect nominated by the king. It is to the credit of the Scottish princes, that there are few instances of their abusing an authority so extensive as that which they constitutionally enjoyed. 3. The king had anciently the supreme jurisdiction in all causes, civil and criminal, which he generally exercised through the medium of his privy council; but in 1425, James I. instituted the Court of Session, consisting of the chancellor and certain judges chosen from the three estates. This court was newinodelled by James V. and its jurisdiction limited to civil causes, the cognizance of crimes being committed to the justiciary. The chancellor was the highest officer of the crown, and president of the parliament. To the chamberlain belonged the care of the finances and the public police; to the high-steward the charge of the king's household: the constable regulated all matters of military arrangement; and the marshall was the king's lieutenant and master of the horse. 4. The revenues of the sovereign consisted of his domain, which was extensive, of the feudal casualties and forfeitures, the profits of the wardships of his vassals, the rents of vacant benefices, the pecuniary fines for offences, and the aids or presents occasionally given by the subject; a revenue at all times sufficient for the purposes of government, and the support of the dignity of the crown. 5. The political principles which regulated the conduct of the Scots towards other nations were obvious and simple. It had ever been an object of ambition to England to acquire the sovereignty of her sister kingdom, who was constantly on her guard against this design of her more potent neighbour. It was the wisest policy for Scotland to attach herself to France, the constant enemy of England; an alliance reciprocally courted from similar motives. In those days this attachment was justly esteemed patriotic; while the Scots, who were the partisans of England, were with equal justice regarded as traitors to their country. In the period of which we now treat, it was a settled policy of the English sovereigns to have a secret faction in their pay in Scotland, for the purpose of dividing, and thus enslaving the nation; and to this source all the subsequent disorders of the latter kingdom are to be attributed. SECTION XXXIII. A VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF LITERATURE AND SCIENCE IN EUROPE, FROM THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS DOWN TO THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. 1. THE first restorers of learning in Europe were the Arabians, who, in the course of their Asiatic conquests, becoming acquainted with some of the ancient Greek authors, discovered and justly appreciated the knowledge and improvement to be derived from them. The caliphs procured from the eastern emperors copies of the ancient manuscripts, and had them carefully translated into Arabic; esteeming principally those which treated of mathematics, physics, and metaphysics. They disseminated their knowledge in the course of their conquests, and founded schools and colleges in all the countries they subdued. 2. The western kingdoms of Europe became first acquainted with the learning of the ancients, through the medium of those Arabian translations. Charlemagne caused Latin translations to be made from the Arabian, and founded, after the example of the caliphs, the universities of Bononia, Pavia, Osnaburg, and Paris. Alfred, with a similar spirit, and by similar means, introduced a taste for literature in England; but the subsequent disorders of the kingdom replunged it into barbarism. The Normans, however, brought from the continent some tincture of ancient learning, which was kept alive in the monasteries, where the monks were meritoriously employed in transcribing a few of the ancient authors, along with the legendary lives of the saints. 3. In this dawn of literature in England appeared Henry of Huntingdon and Geoffery of Monmouth, names distinguished in the earliest annals of poetry and romance; John of Salisbury, a moralist; William of Malmesbury, annalist of the history of England before the reign of Stephen; Giraldus Cambrensis, known in the fields of history, theology, and poetry; Joseph of Exeter, author of two Latin epic poems on the Trojan war, and the war of Antioch, or the crusade, which are read with pleasure even in the present day. 4. But this era of a good taste in letters was of short duration. The taste for classical composition and historic information yielded to the barbarous subtleties of scholastic divinity taught by Lombard and Abelard [d. 1142]; and the abstruse doctrines of the Roman law, which began to engage the general attention from the recent discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi, 1137. The amusements of the vulgar in those periods were metrical and prose romances, unintelligible prophecies, and fables of giants and enchanters. 5. In the middle of the thirteenth century appeared a distinguished genius, Roger Bacon [d. 1294], an English friar, whose comprehensive mind was filled with all the stores of ancient learning; who possessed a discriminating judgment to separate the precious ore from the dross, and a power of invention fitted to advance in every science which was the object of his study. He saw the insufficiency of the school of philosophy, and first recommended the prosecution of knowledge by experiment and the observation of nature. He made discoveries of importance in astronomy, in optics, in chemistry and medicine, and mechanics. He reformed the calendar; discovered the construction of telescopic glasses, forgotten after his time, and revived by Galileo; and has left a plain intimation of his knowledge of the composition of gunpowder. Yet this most superior genius believed in the possibility of discovering an elixir for the prolongation of life, in the transmutation of metals into gold, and in judicial astrology. 6. A general taste prevailed for poetical composition in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The troubadours of Provence wrote sonnets, madrigals, and satirical ballads, and excelled in extempore dialogues on the subject of love, which they treated in a metaphysical and Platonic strain. They contended for the prize of poetry at solemn meetings, where princes, nobles, and the most illustrious ladies, attended to decide between the rival bards; and some of those princes, as Richard I. of England, Frederick I. emperor of Germany, are celebrated themselves as troubadours of eminence. Many fragments yet remain of their compositions. 7. The transference of the papal seat to Avignon in the fourteenth century familiarized the Italian poets with the songs of the troubadours, and gave a tincture of the Provençal style to their compositions, which is very observable in the poetry of Dante [d. 1321], the father of modern Italian poetry, and of Petrarch [d. 1374], the reviver of ancient learning. The Divina Commedia of Dante first introduced the machinery of angels and devils in the room of the Pagan mythology, and is a work containing many examples of the terrible sublime. The Sonnets and Canzoni of Petrarch are highly tender and pathetic, though vitiated with a quaintness and conceit which is a prevailing feature of the Italian poetry. The Decamerone of Boccaccio [d. 1375], a work of the same age, is a masterpiece of invention, ingenious narrative, and acquaintance with human nature, These authors have fixed the standard of the Italian language. 8. Contemporary with them, and of rival merit, was the English Chaucer [d. 1400], who displays all the talents of Boccaccio through the medium of excellent poetry. The works of Chaucer discover an extensive knowledge of the sciences, an acquaintance both with ancient and modern learning, particularly the literature of France and Italy, and, above all, a most acute discernment of life and manners. 9. Of similar character are the poems of Gower [d. 1402], but of a graver cast, and a more chastened morality. Equal to these eminent men, in every species of literary merit, was the accomplished James I. of Scotland, of which his remaining writings bear convincing testimony. 10. Spain at this period began to emerge from ignorance and barbarism, and to produce a few of those works which are enumerated with approbation in the whimsical but judicious criticism of Cervantes (Don Quixote, b. i., c. 6). 11. But although poetry attained in those ages a considerable degree of splendour, there was but little advancement in general literature and science. History was disgraced by the intermixture of miracle and fable; though we find much curious information in the writings of Matthew of Westminster, of Walsingham, Everard, Duysburg, and the Chronicles of Froissart [d. 1401], and Monstrelet [d. 1453]. Philip de Comines [d. 1509], happily describes the reigns of Louis XI. and Charles VIII. of France. Villani [d. 1348] and Platina [d. 1481] are valuable recorders of the affairs of Italy. 12. A taste for classical learning in the fifteenth century led to the discovery of many of the ancient authors. Poggio discovered the writings of Quintilian, and several of the compositions of Cicero, which stimulated to further research, and the recovery of many valuable remains of Greek and Roman literature. But this taste was not generally diffused. France and England were extremely barbarous. The library at Oxford contained only 600 volumes, and there were but four classics in the royal library at Paris. But a brighter period was approaching. The dispersion of the Greeks, on the fall of the eastern empire, in the end of the fifteenth century, diffused a taste for polite literature over all the west of Europe. A succession of popes, endowed with a liberal and enlightened spirit, gave every encouragement to learning and the sciences; and, above all, the noble discovery of the Art of Printing contributed to their rapid advancement and dissemination, and gave a certain assurance of the perpetuation of every valuable art, and the progressive improvement of human knowledge. 13. The rise of dramatic composition among the moderns is to be traced to the absurd and ludicrous representation in the churches of the Scripture histories, called in England Mysteries, Miracles, and Moralities. These were first exhibited in the twelfth century, and continued to the sixteenth in England, when they were prohibited by law, 1543. Of these we have amusing specimens in Warton's History of English Poetry. Profane dramas were substituted in their place; and a mixture of the sacred and profane appears to have been known in France as early as 1300. In Spain, the farcical mysteries keep their ground to the present day; nor was it till the end of the sixteenth century that any regular composition for the stage was known in that country. The Italians are allowed by their own writers to have borrowed their theatre from the French and English. SECTION XXXIV. VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF COMMERCE IN EUROPE BEFORE THE PORTUGUESE DISCOVERIES. 1. BEFORE giving an account of the discoveries of the Portuguese in the fifteenth century, in exploring a new route to India, we shall present a short view of the progress of commerce in Europe down to that period. The boldest naval enterprise of the ancients was the Periplus of Hanno, who sailed from Carthage (570, B. C.) to the coast of Guinea, within four or five degrees of the line. Africa was not known by the ancients to be almost circumnavigable. They had a very limited knowledge of the habitable earth. They believed that both the torrid and frigid zones were uninhabitable; and they were but very imperfectly acquainted with a great part of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Denmark, Sweden, Prussia, Poland, the greatest part of Russia, were unknown to them. Ptolemy's description of the globe, the 63d degree of latitude is the limit of the earth to the North, the equinoctial to the South. In 2. Britain was circumnavigated in the time of Domitian. The Romans frequented it for the purposes of commerce; and Tacitus mentions London as a celebrated resort of merchants. The commerce of the ancients was, however, chiefly confined to the |