The rule under which it lives is the rule of the horrible Merovingian kings.

Side by side with the villas barbarism spreads and flourishes like a jungle growth.

Learning is dying--hardly the ghost of a university is left--and Gregory himself who came of a great Gallo-Roman family and was a bishop bewails his ignorance of grammar.

The towns are shrinking, crouched behind their defences.

The synagogues are flaming, and the first step has been taken in that tragic tale of proscription and tallage, tallage and expulsion which (it seems) must never end.