MEDIEVAL LIFE IN EUROPE 297

plosive, and believed in the possibility of mechanically pro-
pelled vehicles, as the following remarkable passage from his
writings reveals :—

1 Machines for navigating are possible without rowers, so
that great ships suited to river or ocean, guided by one man,
may be borne with greater speed than if they were full of
men. Likewise, cars may be made so that without a draught
animal they may be moved-----as we deem the scythed cha-
riots to have been from which antiquity fought. And flying
machines are possible, so that a man may sit in the middle
turning some device by which artificial wings may beat the
air in the manner of a flying bird/

Among the writers of the age we have space only for a
few observations on the greatest. The most famous among
the earliest was St. Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo. His
The City <tf God which was written when Rome fell before
Alaric the Goth in 410, served as a beacon in the encircling
gloom of the Dark Age. "The greatest city of the world
has fallen in ruin," he wrote, " but thej city of God abideth
for ever." His more popular work is his Confessions " which
have a human interest equal to that of the self-revelations
of Bunyan and Rousseau,"—and we may add, of Tolstoy
and Gandhi also.

Of unknown authorship, but of great medieval interest, is
the German epic entitled the Niblwngm Lied which has been
popularised by the music-dramas of Wagner. It is the story
of the romantic adventures of its hero Siegfried, son of
Siegmund, king of the Netherland. Its stage is the city
of Worms which, says Carlyle, " had we a right imagination,
ought to be as venerable to us modems as any Thebes or
Troy was to the ancients."

By far the greatest genius of the age, however,
was Dante who was born in Florence in 1265.
His love for Beatrice which inspired his Divine Comedy is