istinguished by their names.
Their names undoubtedly form a reasonable presumption; yet in reading
Gregory of Tours, I have observed Gondulphus, of Senatorian, or
Roman, extraction, (l. vi. c. 11, in tom. ii. p. 273,) and Claudius, a
Barbarian, (l. vii. c. 29, p. 303.)]

[Footnote 114: Eunius Mummolus is repeatedly mentioned by Gregory of
Tours, from the fourth (c. 42, p. 224) to the seventh (c. 40, p. 310)
book. The computation by talents is singular enough; but if Gregory
attached any meaning to that obsolete word, the treasures of Mummolus
must have exceeded 100,000 L. sterling.]

[Footnote 115: See Fleury, Discours iii. sur l'Histoire Ecclesiastique.]

[Footnote 116: The bishop of Tours himself has recorded the complaint of
Chilperic, the grandson of Clovis. Ecce pauper remansit Fiscus noster;
ecce divitiae nostrae ad ecclesias sunt translatae; nulli penitus nisi
soli Episcopi regnant, (l. vi. c. 46, in tom. ii. p. 291.)]

[Footnote 117: See the Ripuarian Code, (tit. xxxvi in tom. iv. p. 241.)
The Salic law does not provide for the safety of the clergy; and we
might suppose, on the behalf of the more civilized tribe, that they
had not foreseen such an impious act as the murder of a priest. Yet
Praetextatus, archbishop of Rouen, was assassinated by the order of
Queen Fredegundis before the altar, (Greg. Turon. l. viii. c. 31, in
tom. ii. p. 326.)]

[Footnote 118: M. Bonamy (Mem. de l'Academie des Inscriptions, tom.
xxiv. p. 582-670) has ascertained the Lingua Romana Rustica, which,
through the medium of the Romance, has gradually been polished into the
actual form of the French language. Under the Carlovingian race, the
kings and nobles of France still understood the dialect of their German
ancestors.]

The Franks, after they mingled with their Gallic subjects, might have
imparted the most valuable of human gifts, a spirit and system of
constitutional liberty. Under a king, hereditary, but limited, the
chiefs and counsellors might have debated at Paris, in the palace of the
Caesars: the adjacent field, where the emperors reviewed their mercenary
legions. would have admitted the legislative assembly of freemen and
warriors; and the rude model, which had been sketched in the woods of
Germany, [119] might have been polished and improved by the civil wisdom
of the Romans. But the careless Barbarians, secure of their personal
independence, disdained the labor of government: the annual assemblies
of the month of Mar