He almost immediately, with
an alertness by no means natural to him, undertook a great circuitous
journey along the frontier of an enemy worse than savage, within the
sound of their cannon, within the range of the light troops of the
different armies, and through roads ruined by the enormous machinery
of war."
In this public and private gloom he bade for ever farewell to
Lausanne. He was himself rapidly approaching
"The dark portal,
Goal of all mortal,"
but of this he knew not as yet. While he is in the house of mourning,
beside his bereaved friend, we will return for a short space to
consider the conclusion of his great work.
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST THREE VOLUMES OF THE DECLINE AND FALL.
The thousand years between the fifth and the fifteenth century
comprise the middle age, a period which only recently, through utterly
inadequate conceptions of social growth, was wont to be called the
dark ages. That long epoch of travail and growth, during which the old
field of civilisation was broken up and sown afresh with new and
various seed unknown to antiquity, receives now on all hands due
recognition, as being one of the most rich, fertile, and interesting
in the history of man.
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