bold enough to defend the sublime
doctrine of Plato, "that God is the seat of ideas,
as space is the seat of bodies, and that
the soul was an emanation of the divine essence,
from whom it imbibed all its ideas; but that
having sinned, it was degraded from its first
estate, and condemned to an union with the
body, wherein it is confined as in a prison;
that its forgetfulness of its former ideas was
the natural consequence of that penalty; and
that the benefit of religion consists in repairing
this loss by gradually leading back the soul
to its first conceptions." This doctrine, in
contra-distinction to the ridiculous figments
of the Nominalists, the Realists, and
Conceptualists of his age; this the philosophy of
Plato—illustrated by the polemics of
Aristotle, enriched by the schools of Alexandria,
and afterwards matured by
Mallebranche, Descartes, and Liebnitz—was taught
by Peter Abelard to thousands of scholars
of every nation in the twelfth century,
while the Norman Kings of England were
laying waste their own dominions to make
hunting forests for their beasts of venery;
while princes and emperors were signing
proclamations with their "mark," made
by their gauntlet-fingers dipped in ink;
while the blackest ignorance, the most brutal
violence, the grossest and most debasing
superstition, overran the fairest portion of
Europe. The friends of Abelard were the
noblest of the noble; his admirers the fairest
of the fair; his very adversaries were popes,
saints, and martyrs.

In the year of grace eleven hundred and
eighteen, when Louis the Fat was king of the
French people, the metropolis was entirely
contained in that space which at the present
day forms one of its smallest sections—the
Cité of Paris. In this famous island,
dividing, as all men know, the river Seine
into two arms, were concentrated all
the grandeurs of the kingdom—the church, the
royal palace, the law, the schools. These
powers had here their seat. Two bridges
united the island to the two shores of the
river. The Grand Pont led to the right bank,
towards the quarter where between the
ancient churches of St. Germain l'Auxerrois
and St. Gervais, a few foreign merchants had
begun to settle, attracted by the already
considerable renown of the Lutetia of the
Gauls. Towards the left bank the Petit
Pont led to the foot of that hill, then, as now,
crowned by a church dedicated to St.
Généviève, the patroness of Paris. The neighbouring
meadows or prés (particularly towards the
foot of the Petit Pont) became gradually
frequented by the Scholars, or students, or
clercs, who attended the scholastic concourse
in the Cité. The number of these noisy and
turbulent young men, always increasing, soon
overflowed the confined limits of the Cité.
So they crossed the Petit Pont into the
meadows at the foot of the hill of St. Généviève
—first to play and gambol and fight on its
pleasant green sward; afterwards—when
inns and lodging-houses were built for their
accommodation—to dwell in them. Thus,
opposite the city of commerce grew up little
by little a city of learning; and, betwixt the
two, maintained its grim state the city of law
and the priesthood. The quarter inhabited
by the students came soon to be denominated
le Pays Latin, and it is thus called to the
day I live and write in.

In the Cité, opposite to the sovereign's
palace—where in those days the sovereign
himself administered justice, and where in
these days justice is yet administered in
his name—stood the great metropolitan
church of Nôtre Dame; and around it, were
ranged fifteen other churches, like soldiers
guarding their queen. Nôtre Dame, or at
least the successor of the first Basilica, yet
frowns over the Cité in massive immensity;
but, of the fifteen churches, not one vestige
remains. Here, in the shadows of these
churches and of the cathedral; in dusky
cloisters; in sombre halls; upon the shadowy
lawns of high-walled gardens, went and
came a throng of students of all degrees, of
all occupations, of all nations. The fame of
the schools of Paris drew towards them (as
in one department, medicine, they do still)
scholars from every land on the face of the
yet discovered globe. Here, amidst the
confusions of costumes, and ranks, and languages,
and ages, glided solemn priests and sage professors.
Above them all, pre-eminent, unrivalled,
unquestioned in his intellectual sovereignty,
moved a man in the prime of life, with a broad
and massive forehead, a proud and piercing
glance, a manly gait, whose beauty yet
preserved the brilliancy of youth, while admitting
to participate with it the deeper hues
of maturity. The simple elegance of his
manners, alternately affable and haughty, an
imposing yet graceful presence; the respectful
curiosity of the multitudes whom he did not
know, the enthusiastic admiration of the
multitudes he did know, who hung upon his
words, all announced in him the most
powerful in the schools, the most illustrious in
the land, the most beloved in the Cité. Old
men uncovered as he passed; women at the
doors held out their little children to him;
maidens above drew aside the curtains from
their latticed casements, and blushingly
glanced downwards towards him. The men
and the children all pressed to see, and
stretched their necks to hear, and shouted
when they had seen and heard Maitre Pierre
—the famous Abelard—as he went by.

He was now thirty-nine years old. He
was the son of Beranger, the seigneur of
his native place, Pallet, near Nantes in Brittany,
where he was born in the year one
thousand and seventy-nine. He was the eldest
son; but, no sooner had the time arrived for
him to choose a profession, than, eschewing
arms—the profession of every seigneur's
eldest born—he openly avowed his preference