disputed between France and Germany for a long period, and it may be fairly said that the Franco-Prussian War was the last stage in its history up to the present. A similar state existed in the east of Europe, viz. the kingdom of Poland, which was equally indefinite in shape, and has equally formed a subject of dispute between the nations of Eastern Europe. This, as is well known, only disappeared as an independent state in 1795, when it finally ceased to act as a buffer between Russia and the rest of Europe. Roughly speaking, after the settlement of the Germanic tribes within the confines of the Empire, the history of Europe, and therefore its historical geography, may be summed up as a struggle for the possession of Burgundy and Poland.
But there was an important interlude in the south-west of Europe, which must engage our attention as a symptom of a world-historic change in the condition of civilisation. During the course of the seventh and eighth centuries (roughly, between 622 and 750) the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula burst the seclusion which they had held since the beginning, almost, of history, and, inspired by the zeal of the newly-founded religion of Islam, spread their influence from India to Spain, along the southern littoral of the Mediterranean. When they had once settled down, they began to recover the remnants of Græco-Roman science that had been lost on the north shores of the Mediterranean. The Christians of Syria used Greek for their sacred language, and accordingly when the Sultans of Bagdad desired to know something of the wisdom of the Greeks, they got Syriac-speaking Christians to translate some of the scientific works of
