Excerpt from Glimpses of the Dark Ages: Or Sketches of the Social Condition of Europe, From the Fifth to Twelfth Century IN the following sketch, the author has confined himself to one branch of' the History of the Middle Ages. He attempts nothing more than a glance at the social condition of Europe, from the fifth to the twelfth century; political affairs, military transac tions, the rise and fall of dynasties, the relation of European states to each other, and the lives and deeds of the heroes of' those days, do not come with in the range of his plan. He has marked out the first six centuries of the middle ages for separate consideration, because in the twelfth century a new epoch commenced. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.