was the theocratic principle which attempted the revival of civilization.

In France the same endeavour was the work of a different power; it came from the great men, above all from Charlemagne. Examine his reign under its various aspects; you will see that his predominating idea was the design of civilizing his people. First, let us consider his wars. He was constantly in the field, from the south to the north-east, from the Ebro to the Elbe or the Weser. Can you believe that these were mere wilful expeditions, arising simply from the desire of conquest? By no means. I do not mean to say that all that he did is to be fully explained, or that there existed much diplomacy or strategetic skill in his plans; but he obeyed a great necessity-a strong desire of suppressing barbarism. He was engaged during the whole of his reign in arresting the double invasion-the Mussulman invasion on the south, and the German and Sclavonic invasion on the north. This is the military character of the reign of Charlemagne; his expedition against the Saxons had no other origin and no other purpose.

If you turn from his wars to his internal government, you will there meet with a fact of the same nature-the attempt to introduce order and unity into the administration of all the countries which he possessed. I do not wish to employ the word kingdom nor the word state; for these expressions convey too regular a notion, and suggest ideas which are little in harmony with the society over which Charlemagne presided. But this is certain, that being master of an immense territory, he felt indignant at seeing all things incoherent, anarchical, and rude, and desired to alter their hideous condition. First of all he wrought by means of his missi domınici, whom he dispatched into the various parts of his territory, in order that they might observe circumstances and reform them, or give an account of them to him. He afterwards worked by means of general assemblies, which he held with much more regularity than his predecessors had done. At these assemblies he caused all the most considerable persons of the territory to be present. They were not free assemblies, nor did they at all resemble the kind of deliberations with which we are acquainted; they were merely a means taken by Charlemagne of being well informed of facts,

and of introducing some order and unity among his disorderly populations.

Under whatever point of view you consider the reign of Charlemagne, you will always find in it the same character, namely, warfare against the barbarous state, the spirit of civilization; this is what appears in his eagerness to establish. schools, in his taste for learned men, in the favour with which he regarded ecclesiastical influence, and in all that he thought proper to do, whether as regarded the entire society or individual man.

An attempt of the same kind was made somewhat later in England by king Alfred.

Thus the different causes to which I have directed attention, as tending to put an end to barbarism, were in action in some part or other of Europe from the fifth to the ninth century.

None succeeded. Charlemagne was unable to found his great empire, and the system of government which he desired to establish therein. In Spain, the church succeeded no better in establishing the theocratic principle. In Italy and in the south of Gaul, although Roman civilization often attempted to rise again, it was not till afterwards, towards the end of the tenth century, that it really re-acquired any vigour. Up to that time all efforts to terminate barbarism proved abortive; they supposed that men were more advanced than they truly were; they all desired, under various forms, a society more extended or more regular than was compatible with the distribution of power and the condition of men's minds. Nevertheless, they had not been wholly useless. At the beginning of the tenth century, neither the great empire of Charlemagne nor the glorious councils of Toledo were any longer spoken of; but barbarism had not the less arrived at its extreme termtwo great results had been obtained.

I. The movement of the invasions on the north and south had been arrested: after the dismemberment of the empire of Charlemagne, the states established on the right bank of the Rhine opposed a powerful barrier to the tribes who continued to urge their way westward. The Normans prove this incontestably; up to this period, if we except the tribes which cast themselves upon England, the movement of maritime invasions had not been very considerable. It was during the

ninth century that it became constant and general. And this was because invasions by land were become very difficult, society having, on this side, acquired more fixed and certain frontiers. That portion of the wandering population which could not be driven back, was constrained to turn aside and carry on its roving life upon the sea. Whatever evils were done in the west by Norman expeditions, they were far less fatal than invasions by land; they disturbed dawning society far less generally.

In the south, the same fact declared itself. The Arabs were quartered in Spain; warfare continued between them and the Christians, but it no longer entailed the displacement of the population. Saracenic bands still, from time to time, infested the coasts of the Mediterranean; but the grand progress of Islamism had evidently ceased.

II. At this period we see the wandering life ceasing, in its turn, throughout the interior of Europe; populations established themselves; property became fixed; and the relations of men no longer varied from day to day, at the will of violence or chance. The internal and moral condition of man himself began to change; his ideas and sentiments, like his life, acquired fixedness; he attached himself to the places which he inhabited, to the relations which he had contracted there, to those domains which he began to promise himself that he would bequeath to his children, to that dwelling which one day he will call his castle, to that miserable collection of colonists and slaves which will one day become a village. Everywhere little societies, little states, cut, so to speak, to the measure of the ideas and the wisdom of man, formed themselves. Between these societies was gradually introduced the bond, of which the customs of barbarism contained the germ, the bond of a confederation which did not annihilate individual independence. On the one haud, every considerable person established himself in his domains, alone with his family and servitors; on the other hand, a certain hierarchy of services and rights became established between these warlike proprietors scattered over the land. What was this? The feudal system rising definitively from the bosom of barbarism. Of the various elements of our civilization, it was natural that the Germanic element should first prevail; it had strength on its side, it had con

quered Europe; from it Europe was to receive its earlicst social form and organization. This is what happened. Feu dalism, its character, and the part played by it in the history of European civilization, will be the subject-matter of my next lecture; and, in the bosom of that victorious feudal system, we shall meet, at every step, with the other elements of our civilization-royalty, the church, municipal corporations; and we shall foresee without difficulty that they are nc destined to sink beneath this feudal form, to which they become assimilated, while struggling against it, and while waiting the hour when victory shall visit them in their turn.

FOURTH LECTURE.

Object of the lecture-Necessary alliance between facts and doctrinesPreponderance of the country over the towns-Organization of a small feudal society-Influence of feudalism upon the character of the possessor of the fief, and upon the spirit of family-Hatred of the people towards the feudal system-The priest could do little for the serfs-Impossibility of regularly organizing feudalism: 1. No powerful authority; 2. No publie power; 3. Difficulty of the federative system-The idea of the right of resistance inherent in feudalism-Influence of feudalism favourable to the development of the individual, unfavourable to social order.

We have studied the condition of Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, in the first period of modern history, the barbarous. We have seen that, at the end of this epoch, and at the commencement of the tenth century, the first principle, the first system that developed itself and took possession of European society, was the feudal system; we have seen that feudalism was the first-born of barbarism. It is, then, the feu lal system which must now be the object of our study.

I scarcely think it necessary to remind you that it is not the history of events, properly speaking, which we are conBidering. It is not my business to recount to you the destinies of feudalism. That which occupies us is the history of civilization; this is the general and hidden fact which we seek under all the external facts which envelop it.

Thus events, social crises, the various states through which society has passed, interest us only in their relations to the development of civilization; we inquire of them solely in what respects they have opposed or assisted it, what they have given to it, and what they have refused it. It is only under this point of view that we are to consider the feudal system.