troul the elemental demons, and the spirits of another world. Lastly, if optics and perspective were their study, with the discovery of many ingenious and highly useful instruments, they boasted of globes of glass, which should reveal every passing event, and of tubes, through which might be discerned the secrets of futurity.

Pretensions such as these, however, as they served to stimulate curiosity and excite desire, might have a salutary effect on the apathy of the Christian world, and, no doubt, contributed to accelerate the communication of more important knowledge. The intercourse, notwithstanding, was for a long series of years very slight and partial, and chiefly carried on by the itinerant Jew physicians, who, in the tenth and eleventh centuries, travelled through both Asia and Europe in the practice of their profession; and being masters of various languages, and particularly of Latin and Arabic, the former the general medium of communication in the West, the latter in the East, were enabled to officiate as translators with considerable success and utility. They imported and naturalized not only the best philosophical works of the Arabians of Spain, but those likewise of the literati of Bagdad and Cairo, and proved eminently serviceable in disseminating a taste for oriental science.

"In process of time this dissemination of learning," observes a very eloquent and ingenious writer, "partial as it 'avowedly was, produced its effects and fruit. The love of it at last revived in European breasts, and students hastened in crowds to the schools of Spain for instruction. It would be amusing, and perhaps instructive, to give an account of the different men of learning who presided in their seminaries, to analyse their lectures, and exhibit a list of those European scholars whom the zeal of science sent over the Pyrenees. But such pleasing anecdotes are denied the learned; and the diligent enquiries of Brucker himself have produced nothing interesting on this subject. There is, however, no doubt but in the tenth and eleventh centuries their schools were thronged with students from different parts of Europe; and among these we find Gerbert, afterwards pope, under the name of Sylvester the Second. If such scholars were formed under their eye, we might wish their lecture-rooms had been still more crowded; for Gerbert was undoubtedly the most learned man of his time, and of his tutors we are obliged to think with sentiments of respect. His attainments, seen through the mist of ignorance or prejudice, were magnified into supernatural powers; and the geometrician and chymist swelled

into the magician, who, at will, controlled nature and her works. It would be grateful to record the names of Englishmen who sought knowledge in a distant soil, but, to a hasty search, three only occur. Wallis mentions Adelard, a monk of Bath, who, after acquiring mathematical knowledge in Spain, Egypt, and Arabia, translated Euclid from the Arabic; and Robert of Reading, a brother monk, and cotemporary scholar. Daniel Morlay is noticed by Wood; and Duck, the civilian, represents him as an indefatigable scholar, who, in quest of knowledge, had studied at Oxford, and visited Paris and Toledo*."

Though the sciences familiar to the Arabians, their arithmetic, algebra, and geometry, their medicine, natural history, and botany, their chemistry, astronomy, and philosophy, were very generally studied by Europeans in the eleventh century, few vestiges of the polite literature of the east, of its history, fictions, and poetry, are discernible during that early period. The wonderful delusions, indeed, connected with their magic, alchemy, and astrology, had made considerable progress, and had gained many proselytes; but the manners, customs, traditions, and fables of the Moors were neglected and unknown.

* Introduction to the Literary History of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, p. 130, 131.

To a Greek of the court of Constantinople are we indebted for one of the earliest efforts towards the introduction of oriental fable. About the year 1070, SIMEON SETH, an officer of the imperial household, and eminent for his knowledge of Eastern literature, translated from the Arabic into Greek, a fabulous history of the military adventures of Alexander the Great. This speedily appeared in a Latin version, and meeting with a rapid dispersion, induced Simeon to attempt a translation from the Persian and Arabic of a celebrated collection of apologues, which has since been circulated through Europe under the appellation of the Fables of Pilpay.

This beautiful series of fables, which was familiarized to Europe in a Latin imitation of Seth's version by PIERS ALFONSE, a converted Jew, as early as the year 1107, is now well known to have originated in India, and to have been the prototype of all the apologues ascribed to Æsop and succeeding fabulists. It soon became a kind of sacred book among the Persians and Arabians, and the favourite of Nushervan the Just, and of Mansour, the second Caliph of the dynasty of the Abassides. The very accomplished Sir William Jones, in a discourse delivered by him on the 26th of February, 1786, speaking of the Ethics of the Hindoos, observes; "their Neetee

Sastra, or System of Ethics, is yet preserved; and the fables of Veeshnou Sarma, whom we ridiculously call Pilpay, are the most beautiful, if not the most ancient, collection of Apologues in the world they were first translated from the Sanskreet in the sixth century, by the order of Buzerchumihr, or bright as the sun, the chief physician, and afterwards the Vizeer of the great Anushirevan, and are extant under various names in more than twenty languages; but their original title is Hitbpadesa, or amicable instruction; and, as the very existence of Æsop, whom, the Arabs believe to have been an Abyssinian, appears rather doubtful, I am not disinclined to suppose, that the first moral fables which appeared in Europe were of Indian or Ethiopian origin." This account is corroborated by FRASER in his catalogue of Oriental manuscripts. "The ancient Brahmins of India," he remarks, "after a great deal of time and labour, compiled a treatise, which they called Kurtuck Dumnik, in which were inserted the choicest treasures of wisdom, and the perfectest rules for governing a people. This book they presented to their Rajahs, who kept it with the greatest secresy and care. About the time of Mahommed's birth, or the latter end of the sixth century, Noishervan the Just, who then reigned