An unexpectedly large audience listened to Professor Marsh's lecture last evening on "The Classics in the Revival of Learning." The decline in learning said Professor Marsh, began as early as the third century, owing to the spiritual and intellectual depression. Nobody dared think or act independently. In the fifth century came the invasions of the barbarians into Italy, destroying almost all traces of classical learning. But about this time came the beginning of a revival, that was to culminate in the Renaissance. In these mediaeval days education was limited chiefly to grammar and rhetoric. For illustration, in these branches, the ancient authors were more or less quoted, and in this way the classical learning was in a measure kept alive. The revival in these studies began with some Irish scholars and was soon spread to France. Some however, with the Irish, began a renewal of interest in the philosophy of the ancients. For some enthusiasts began to read all they could find of the classical writings. One reason for especial interest in the ninth century was that the stories of ancient heroes were much like the lives their own hero Charlemagne. At first, the poets and story tellers told fictitious stories, not being able to read the classics, but soon they began to turn to Latin, and then to Greek, as the source of Latin learning - because they found so much in the language of immediate value, especially the style of the ancient writers.

Dante and Petrarch do not belong to the same school. Dante was still of the mediaeval times, for he thought only of the universe and the city of God, and Virgil was interesting to him only because they led him through the universe. But Petrarch thought of the present world, the life of to-day, and the classics were interesting to him as expressions of men's lives at that time. Petrarch was a "humanist." Dante still clung to the religious beliefs and drawbacks of mediaeval times.