schools. So we see the lamp of culture pass from Anglia into Frankland,
shortly before the time when Anglia was overrun by the Danes and almost
all the monuments which were destructible perished.

We may dismiss the Anglian period with the remark, that its achievements
are all the more distinguished from the fact that they belong to a time
when the whole Continent was in the thickest darkness, that is to say,
the seventh and eighth centuries.

Under Charlemagne a new start was made for the restitution of
literature. He drew learned men to his court, Alcuin from England,
Paulus Diaconus from Italy. Thus he made a new centre for European
learning, and France continued to sustain that character down to the
latter end of the Middle Ages. His chief agent in this great work of
enlightenment was Alcuin, who was educated at York under Egbert, who had
been a disciple of Beda. And so we see the torch of learning handed on
from Northumbria to the Frankish dominions in time to save the tradition
of culture from perishing in the desolation that was near. Among the
names that adorn the annals of revived learning under Charles himself,
we must mention Smaragdus, because Ælfric acknowledges him as one of his
sources. The book referred to would hardly be the "Diadem of Monks," a
selection of pieces from the Fathers with Scripture texts, worked up as
it were into a Whole Duty of Man, although Ælfric would be likely to
know this book; but for the composition of his Homilies it is more
likely that Ælfric would have drawn from another book by Smaragdus,
namely, his commentary on the Epistles and Gospels for Sundays.

Men who have left their names in history now followed in the work of
sustaining the revival of learning. We must mention Rabanus Maurus,
whose Scripture commentaries were used by the poet of the "Heliand"; and