the centres of progress, this time in a new direction, toward the recovery of the antique past and the development of art.
This is the so-called Renaissance (q.v.). The humanists which it produced, interested only in its splendid revelations, forgot or ignored the achievements of the period which intervened between Cicero and Petrarch. Then by the genius of their work they fastened their mistaken perspective upon historians and the cultured world at large. They struck upon the unfortunate and opprobrious term “middle ages” for that which stood between them and their classic ideals. The term was first used in this sense by Flavio Biondo, whose “decades” was an attempt to block out the annals of history from 410 to 1410. His treatment fell in admirably with the ideas of his age and of that following. To Protestants the age of the papal monarchy was like the reign of Anti-Christ. Then, after the indifference of humanists and Protestant polemic, came the disgust of men of science at the scholastic philosophy—an attitude best exhibited in Bacon’s Advancement of Learning. The 18th century was thus trebly barred from a knowledge of genuine medieval history. Romanticism, that reaction in which Sir Walter Scott, the Schlegels and Victor Hugo so largely figured, was as far from understanding what it admired as classicism had been from what it hated. Its extravagant praise of all that savoured of the middle ages was still blind to their real progress and work. They were, for it, the ages of romance and chivalry. The view of the romanticists was as one-sided as any that had gone before. It is only with the introduction of a wider outlook in the scientific study of history that it has been possible to straighten the perspective and modify the traditional scheme. In the purely intellectual sphere it is certainly true that the recovery of the antique world was of great importance; that it made possible genuine criticism by presenting new points of contrast and opening up fields that led away from theological quibbles. But it did not mean the “double discovery of the outer and inner world.” Mankind did not, as Burckhardt and J. A. Symonds lead one to imagine, suddenly throw off a cowl that has blinded the eyes for a thousand years to the beauty of the world around, and awaken all at once to the mere joy of living. If any one was ever awake to the joys of living it was the minnesinger, troubadour or goliard, and the world had to wait until Rousseau and Burns before its external beauty was discovered, or at least deeply appreciated, by any but a few Dutch artists. Even Goethe crossed the Alps with his carriage shutters closed. Mont Blanc is not mentioned by travellers until after the middle of the 18th century. The discovery of the outer world is a recent thing in art as well as in science. As for the claim that the “Renaissance” delivered men from that blind reliance upon authority which was typical of “medieval” thought, that is a fallacy cherished by those who themselves rely upon the authority of historians, blind to the most ordinary processes of thought. In this regard, indeed, in spite of the advance of scientific method and the wealth of material upon which to base criticism, we are still for the most part in the middle ages. The respect for anything in books, the dogma of journalistic inerrancy which still numbers its devotees by millions, the common acceptance of even scientific conceptions upon the dicta of a small group of investigators, these are but a few of the signs of the persistence of what is surely not a medieval but a universal trait. The so-called Renaissance did much; but it did not do the things attributed to it by those who see the “middle ages” through humanist glasses.
Upon the whole, therefore, it would seem that not only was there no one middle age common to all branches of human evolution, except the period more definitely marked as the dark age, but that those characteristics which are generally regarded as “medieval” were by no means limited to a single epoch of European history. In short, the dark age was a reality; but the traditional “middle ages” are a myth. (J. T. S.*)
MIDDLEBORO, a township of Plymouth county, Massachusetts,
U.S.A., in the S.E. part of the state, bounded on the N.W.
by the Taunton river. Pop. (1890), 6065; (1900), 6885-of
whom 920 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 8214. Area,
about 70 sq. m. The principal village also is named Middleboro;
it is 35 m. S. of Boston, is served by the New York, New Haven
& Hartford railroad and by electric lines connecting with
Taunton, Boston, New Bedford and Cape Cod, and has a townhouse,
a soldiers’ monument, and a public library housed in a
building erected from a fund (part of which is used as a permanent
endowment) bequeathed by Thomas Sprout Peirce (1823–1901),
a merchant of the township, who, in addition, bequeathed about
$500,000 as a special trust-fund for the use and benefit of the
town of Middleboro; the income has been spent largely in the
construction of macadam roads, the erection of an almshouse
and the installation of special courses in the high school. The
village, a place of considerable natural beauty, is a summer
resort, and has various manufactures. Other villages in the
township are North, East and South Middleboro, and Rock.
The township had important herring fisheries in early times and
manufactured straw hats (from 1828) and ladies’ dress goods.
Middleboro was settled about 1662 under the Indian name
Nemasket; became a part of the township of Plymouth in 1663;
and in 1669 was incorporated as a separate township, taking its
name probably from Middlesbrough, North Riding, York.
See Thomas Weston, History of the Town of Middleboro, Massachusetts (Boston, 1906).
MIDDLEBURY, a village and the county-seat of Addison county, Vermont, U.S.A., in Middlebury township, on Otter
Creek, about 31 m. N.N.W. of Rutland. Pop. of the village
(1890), 1762; (1900), 1897 (221 foreign-born); (1910), 1866;
of the township, (1900), 3045; (1910), 2848. Middlebury is
served by the Rutland railroad. It is picturesquely situated
near the Green Mountain range, and is the seat of Middlebury
College (chartered, 1800; co-educational since 1883), which offers
a classical course and a Latin-scientific course, and had in 1907–1908
12 instructors and 203 students (84 of whom were women),
and a library of 35,000 volumes. The Sheldon art museum and a
public library are among the public institutions of the village,
and the principal buildings include the court-house and the
opera-house. The principal industrial establishments are marble
quarries, “Italian” marble works, iron foundries, lime-kilns,
flour-mills, and door, sash and lumber mills. About 1 m. north
of the village, in the township of Weybridge, there is a large
United States government breeding station for Morgan horses;
and merino sheep are raised in the vicinity.
The township of Middlebury was incorporated in 1761, and the first settlement on the site of the present village was made in 1773. At the outbreak of the War of Independence the settlement was deserted, and all except two or three of the houses were destroyed by British troops; but the settlers returned soon after the close of the war, and the township was formally organized and sent a member to the state assembly in 1788. Middlebury was incorporated as a borough in 1813, and as a village in 1832.
MIDDLESBROUGH, a municipal, county and parliamentary
borough and seaport in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England,
23812 m. N. by W. from London, on the North Eastern railway.
Pop. (1891), 75,532; (1901), 91,302. It lies on the south bank of
the Tees, 5 m. from its mouth in the North Sea, and is the centre
of one of the most important iron-working districts in the world.
It is wholly of modern growth, having been incorporated in 1853.
Its chief buildings are a fine town-hall with lofty clock-tower and spire (1889), containing the municipal offices, free library, &c.; the exchange, county court, Dorman memorial museum and Roman Catholic cathedral. Besides iron and steel works, the first of which was that of Messrs Bolckow, Vaughan & Co., there are rolling-mills, tube works, wire-mills, engineering works, oil works, chemical works, salt works and a considerable shipbuilding industry. The district abounds in blast furnaces. The docks are accessible to large vessels, the entrance having a depth of 32 ft. Extensive dredging operations are carried on in the river. The accommodation for shipping includes two graving docks, two patent slips, &c. The entrance to the river is protected by two breakwaters named respectively the North Gare and South Gare. The furnaces within the port produce some
