lamp in London. Its streets were solidly paved. In Paris, centuries subsequently, whoever stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in mud. Other cities, as Granada, Seville, Toledo, considered themselves rivals of Cordova. The palaces of the Khalifs were magnificently decorated. Those sovereigns might well look down with supercilious contempt on the dwellings of the rulers of Germany, France, and England, which were scarcely better than stables—chimneyless, windowless, with a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape, like the wigwams of certain Indians.
About the same time the passion for learning was
growing in the East. Bagdad was founded A.D. 762,
and about the year 800 Haroun Al-Raschid founded the
famous university of that city. Libraries and schools
were established throughout the two sections of the
Saracenic dominions. Greek and Latin works of philosophy
and science were translated, but the licentious
and blasphemous mythology of the classical poets was
abhorred by this serious nation, and no Arabic versions
of Olympian fables were ever made. Astronomy, mathematics,
metaphysics, and the arts of agriculture, of
horticulture, of architecture, of war, and of commerce,
were advanced to an extent which this century does
not realise, while amid all this progress the study of
chemistry, medicine, and pharmacy was pursued with
particular eagerness.
Curiously the Arabs owed their instruction in these branches of knowledge to those whom we are accustomed to regard as their traditional foes. The dispersion of the Nestorians after the condemnation of their doctrines by the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 resulted in the foundation of a Chaldean Church and the establishment of famous colleges in Syria and Persia. In these the science of the Greeks, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the medical teaching of Hippocrates were kept alive when they had been banished by the Church from Con-
