increasing debility; but the moment at length arrived, when all
the practised skill of despotism, over the long _insouciance_ of
servitude, could no longer keep together the huge and unwieldy
body. In the fourth century, we see it at once break up and
disunite; the barbarians entered on all sides from without, the
provinces ceased to oppose any resistance from within; the cities
to evince any regard for the general welfare; and, as in the
disaster of a shipwreck, every one looked out for his individual
safety. Thus, on the dissolution of the empire, the same general
state of society presented itself as in its cradle. The imperial
authority sunk into the dust, and municipal institutions alone
survived the disaster. This, then, was the chief legacy which the
ancient bequeathed to the modern world--for it alone survived the
storm by which the former had been destroyed--cities and a
municipal organization every where established. But it was not
the only legacy. Beside it, there was the recollection at least
of the awful majesty of the emperor--of a distant, unseen, but
sacred and irresistible power. These are the two ideas which
antiquity bequeathed to modern times. On the one hand, the
municipal _regime_, its rules, customs, and principles of
liberty: on the other a common, general, civil legislation; and
the idea of absolute power, of a sacred majesty, the principle of
order and servitude."--(_Civilization Europeenne_, 20, 23.)

The causes which produced the extraordinary, and at first sight
unaccountable, depopulation of the country districts, not only in
Italy, but in Gaul, Spain, and all the European provinces of the Roman
empire, are explained by Guizot in his _Essays on the History of
France_, and have been fully demonstrated by Sismondi, Thierry, and
Michelet. They were a natural consequence of the municipal system,
then universally established as the very basis of civilization in the
whole Roman empire, and may be seen urging, from a similar cause, the
Turkish empire to dissolution at this day. This was the imposition of
a certain fixed duty, as a burden on each municipality, to be raised,
indeed, by its own members, but admitting of no diminution, save under
the most special circumstances, and on an express exemption by the
emperor. Had the great bulk of the people been free, and the empire
prosperous