sympathise with their lives, while at the same time we have no wish
(not to say hope) to put back the clock, and start from the position
which they held. For, indeed, it is characteristic of the times in
which we live, that whereas in the beginning of the romantic reaction,
its supporters were for the most part mere _laudatores temporis
acti_, at the present time those who take pleasure in studying the
life of the Middle Ages are more commonly to be found in the ranks of
those who are pledged to the forward movement of modern life; while
those who are vainly striving to stem the progress of the world are as
careless of the past as they are fearful of the future. In short,
history, the new sense of modern times, the great compensation for the
losses of the centuries, is now teaching us worthily, and making us
feel that the past is not dead, but is living in us, and will be alive
in the future which we are now helping to make.

To my mind, therefore, no excuse is needful for the attempt made in
the following pages to familiarise the reading public with what was
once a famous knowledge-book of the Middle Ages. But the reader,
before he can enjoy it, must cast away the exploded theory of the
invincible and wilful ignorance of the days when it was written; the
people of that time were eagerly desirous for knowledge, and their
teachers were mostly single-hearted and intelligent men, of a
diligence and laboriousness almost past belief. The "Properties of
Things" of Bartholomew the Englishman is but one of the huge
encyclopaedias written in the early Middle Age for the instruction of
those who wished to learn, and the reputation of it and its fellows
shows how much the science of the day was appreciated by the public at
large, how many there were who wished to learn. Even apart from its
interest as showing the tendency of men's minds in days when Science
did actually tell them "fairy tales," the book is a delightful one in