privy council; the king retaining, as a prerogative, his right of judging in all causes which he should think proper to decide himself. This new tribunal was termed the Court of Session. It was new-modelled by James V., and its jurisdiction limited to civil causes; while the cognizance of crimes was committed exclusively to the justiciary, who had anciently a mixed civil and criminal jurisdiction. The court of session in Scotland was, till the middle of the seventeenth century, composed of an equal number of laymen and ecclesiastics: since that time it has consisted entirely of laymen, whose office is the cognizance of civil causes without any portion of that ancient ministerial jurisdiction which belonged to the Scottish privy council. The highest of the officers of the crown was the chancellor of Scotland. He had the direction of all grants from the crown; and all gifts of offices, all writs and precepts in judicial proceedings, received their sanction from him. In the reign of James II., we find the chancellor ranked immediately after the princes of the blood; and in the reign of Charles II., it was declared specially by law, that the chancellor, in virtue of his office, was perpetual president in the Scottish parliament, and in all the public judicatures in the kingdom.

Anciently, indeed, the highest officer of the crown had been the great justiciar, or justice-general, for he exercised an universal jurisdiction, both civil and criminal; and, in the absence of the sovereign, acted as viceroy of the kingdom. After the institution, however, of the court of session, and the appointment of a court of criminal judges, this officer seems to have yielded in importance and dignity to the chancellor. Other officers of state likewise, who possessed high powers, were the chamberlain, the seneschal, or high steward, the high constable, and the mareschal. The chamberlain, besides the care of the king's person, had the administration of the finances and the care of the public police. To the high steward belonged the government of the king's household and family. The constable possessed a supreme jurisdiction in all points of honor, and in all matters connected with war, and the mareschal was the king's lieutenant and master of the horse.

The revenues of the sovereigns of Scotland arose from the same sources as those of all other feudal princes. The crown possessed certain lands in demesne, which, in process of time, it may be supposed were continually increasing by forfeitures and escheats. The feudal casualties likewise brought in considerable sums to the royal exchequer. The profits of wardships, reliefs, and marriages of the king's vassals were very great. The king enjoyed the revenues of all vacant bishoprics; he imposed arbitrary fines for crimes and trespasses; and, finally, he was entitled to demand aids and presents from the subject upon various occasions-such as the marriage of a princess, or the knighting of a prince. In short, it is reasonable to imagine that the revenue of the kings of

Scotland was at all times sufficient for the support of the dignity of the crown, and adequate to the wants of the sovereign and the purposes of government.

The era, when the kingdom of Scotland seems to have become of considerable consequence in the political system of Europe, was the reign of James IV., when Francis I. of France found it necessary to engage the Scottish monarch in a war with England, to prevent Henry VIII. from carrying his arms into the continent.

The political principles which the Scots followed with respect to themselves and their neighbors were obvious and simple. Scotland, by its local situation, was connected with too powerful a neighbor, England, whose great and unremitting aim it was to acquire the sovereignty of this country, and to join her weaker sister to herself as an appanage. Scotland was always on her guard. The Scots, conscious of the perpetual aim of their potent neighbors, and spurning the thought of dependence, of course attached themselves to France, the natural enemy of England; an alliance equally courted by the French, as favorable to their own interest. In those days, that attachment was esteemed patriotic and favorable to liberty and independence, while, on the other hand, the Scots who were the partisans of England were justly deemed traitors to their country. From the period of which we now treat, we shall see it become a settled policy with the English monarchs to secure an interest in this country by keeping up a secret faction in the pay of England, whose object was to direct such public measures as were most expedient for that kingdom. To this source we shall find Scotland to have been indebted for the greatest part of her subsequent misfortunes.

CHAPTER XVI.

View of the Progress of Literature and Science in Europe.

FOR the sake of a connected view of the Scottish history during the reign of the five Jameses, we have anticipated somewhat in the order of time. We return now to the end of the fifteenth century, a period which may be considered as the epoch of the revival of literature in Europe from that long lethargy in which it had continued for above one thousand years. It is important to consider at some length this interesting subject, and to unite in one connected picture a view of the progressive advancement of European literature, and of its state at this re narkable era.

It is generally admitted that the Arabians were the first restorers of literature in Europe, after that extinction which it suffered from the irruption of the barbarous nations, and the fall of the Western empire. About the beginning of the eighth century, this enterprising people, in the course of their Asiatic conquests, found many manuscripts of the ancient Greek authors, which they carefully preserved; and in that dawn of mental improvement which now began to appear at Bagdad, the gratification which the Arabians received from the perusal of those manuscripts was such, that they requested their caliphs to procure from the Constantinopolitan emperors the works of the best Greek writers. These they translated into Arabic; but the authors who chiefly engaged their attention were those who treated of mathematical, metaphysical, and physical knowledge. The Arabians continued to extend their conquests, and to communicate their knowledge to some of the European nations, which at that time were involved in the greatest ignorance. The Arabians, after their conquests with Spain, founded there several universities; and Charlemagne, likewise, whose zealous encouragement of learning we have already remarked, ordered many of their books to be translated from Arabic into Latin, which being circulated over his extensive dominions, soon became familiar to the Western world. In imitation of the Saracens, too, that monarch founded several universities, among which were those of Bologna, Pavia, Osnaburg, and Paris.*

After the example of Charlemagne, the English Alfred, posterior to him about fifty years, introduced among the Anglo-Saxons a taste for literature, of which he himself, a most accomplished character, possessed a remarkable share. He encouraged learning, not only by his own example, but by founding seminaries and rewarding the labors of ingenious men. But these favorable appearances were blasted no less by the ignorance and barbarism of his successors, than by the continual disorders of the kingdom from the Danish incursions; and from the age of Alfred to the Norman conquest, there was in England a long night of the most illiberal ignorance. At the period of the conquest, the Normans brought from the continent, where learning had not suffered the same extinction, a very considerable degree of cultivation, which diffused itself over all the kingdom. The Latin versions of the Greek authors from the Arabic translations were imported into England; and the bishops settled by the conqueror, who were chiefly foreigners, possessed a much greater portion of erudition than their predecessors. The several convents and abbeys began

The President Hénault questions that opinion which attributes the founda tion of the University of Paris to Charlemagne. "It is not attested," says he, "by any contemporary writer. In all probability the first rise of the university was towards the end of the reign of Lewis the Young; but the name itself did not begin to be used till the reign of St. Lewis; so that Peter Lombard may be looked upon as its founder. Then it was that colleges were erected, different from the schools belonging to the chapters," &c.-Hénault, Abr. Chron.

to found libraries; and in all the great monasteries there was an apartment called the Scriptorium, where many monks were constantly employed in transcribing books for their library.

However absurd to the eye of reason and philosophy may appear the principle which led to monastic seclusion, the obligations which learning owes to those truly deserving characters who, in ages of barbarism, preserved alive, in their secluded cloisters, the embers of the literary spirit, ought never to be forgotten. The ancient Classics were multiplied by transcripts, to which undoubtedly we owe the preservation of such of the Greek and Roman authors as we now possess entire. Even the original labors of some of those monkish writers are possessed of considerable merit, and evince a zeal for the cultivation of letters which does them the highest honor.

In this period of the dawn of erudition, Britain produced several authors of very considerable eminence; of these, I shall enumerate a few of the most remarkable. Henry of Huntingdon wrote, in not inelegant Latin, Poems on philosophical subjects, several books of Epigrams, and Love Verses. Geoffrey of Monmouth, a most laborious inquirer after British antiquity, was bishop of St. Asaph in the year 1152. We have mentioned formerly his History of the Exploits of Arthur, King of the Britons, as being one of the first works which laid the foundation of romantic history in Europe. John of Salisbury was a most distinguished ornament of this age. His Polycraticon " is (in the opinion of Mr. Watson) “a very pleasant miscellany, replete with erudition, and a judgment of men and things which properly belongs to a more sensible and reflecting period." Will am of Malmesbury stands in no mean rank as an historian. His merits have been displayed and much recommended by Lord Littleton, in his History of Henry H." Giraldus Cambrensis deserves particular regard for the univer-ality of his genius, which embraced a wile circle of history, antiquities, divinity, philosophy, and poetry.

But the most remarkable genius in this age for classical composition, was Josephus Iscanus, or Joseph of Exeter, who has written two Latin epic poems, which might have been read with pleasure even in a more cultivated ag›, The one is on the subject of the Trojan war, of which the historical facts are taken from Dares Parygias;" the ouer is entitled “Antiocheis," the War of Antioch, or the Crusade, a soljeet for the choice of which Voltaire has given great credit to Tasso; al hough it is not improbable that he adopted the hint from this ancient poem, which in his age might have been eatire, though there remains of it now only a smail fragment. The poem on the Trojan war, however, is entirely preserved, and has been frequently printed along with Dares Phrygius Dares Phrygius " and " Dietys Cretensis.”

Morhofu Polyheter, 1. 4, u 10,

But this dawning of literature was soon obscured, not only in Britain, but over all Europe. From the time of the conquest we may compute the era of a good taste in learning to have subsisted for little more than a century. The cultivation of polite literature and of classical composition was then neglected, to make room for the barbarous subtleties of scholastic divinity. The first teachers of this art were Lombard, archbishop of Paris, and Peter Abelard, so celebrated for his amours and misfortunes; men whose extensive erudition qualified them for better undertakings than to confound the common sense of mankind with frivolous and unintelligible speculations. From this period, school divinity was judged to be the only pursuit worthy of the attention of mankind; till the science of the law, from the discovery of the Pandects at Amalphi, introduced subtleties of another kind, which came in for their share of the prize of public estimation. The relish for elegant literature was now entirely lost, and-while the learned were busy disputing in their colleges and cloisters on law and theology-ignorance and barbarism were gradually drawing their gloomy curtain once more over the minds of the rest of

mankind.

The only amusement of the common people at this time which deserves the name of literary, was in the old metrical and prose romances, and what had yet much less merit and more absurdity, wild and unintelligible books of prophecies in rhyme. The works of Geoffrey of Monmouth and the fabulous Turpin, with the abundant offspring derived from their stock, were in high estimation in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, however, arose a genius of singular eminence, who, piercing at once through the thickest cloud of ignorance and barbarism, seemed formed to enlighten Europe. This was Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan friar, who in variety and extent of genius is entitled most deservedly to the highest rank in the annals of European literature. He was acquainted with all the ancient languages, and familiar with the works of their best authors. At that time, when every pretender to knowledge drew his creed of science from the works of Aristotle, and servilely adhered to his dogmas and opinions, the genius of Roger Bacon saw the insufficiency of that philosophy; and he began to apply himself with indefatigable industry to that method of investigation by experiment, and by the observation of nature, which was afterwards, at the distance of four centuries, so happily pursued and so strenuously recommended by an illustrious philosopher of the same name, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam. In the "Opus Majus " of Roger Bacon, he declares that if it had been in his power, he would have burnt the whole works of Aristotle quia eorum studium non est nisi temporis amissio, et causa erroris, et multiplicatio ignorantiæ. Accordingly this great man, applying himself to the improvement