And above all these monarchical, aristocratical, and popular pretensions, rises the theocratic claim of the church, which says that, by virtue of her very mission and divine title, society belonged to her, that she alone had any right to govern it, and that she alone was the legitimate queen of the European world, reclaimed by her labours to civilisation and truth. Thus we are placed in a peculiar position. We imagined that we had demonstrated that none of the elements of European civilisation has had exclusive sway in the course of its history, but that they have existed in a constant state of vicinage, of amalgamation, of strife, and of activity; and at our very first step, we find this directly contrary opinion maintained, that at its birth, in the bosom of barbaric Europe, some one or other of these elements had sole possession of society. And it is not in a single country, but in all the countries of Europe, that the advocates for the different principles of our civilisation have put forward their irreconcilable pretensions, under forms and at periods somewhat variable. The historical schools that we have just characterised are not confined to one country, but are met throughout Europe. This fact is important, not in itself, but because it brings to light other facts which hold a material place in our history. Two important particulars are started by this simultaneous advocacy of the most incongruous pretensions to the exclusive possession of power in the first ages of modern Europe. The first is the principle or idea of political legitimacy, which has enacted a prominent part in the drama of European civilisation: the second is the actual and veritable character of the state of barbarian Europe of that epoch, with which we have specially to concern ourselves at this period of our inquiry. I shall proceed to draw these two particulars from obscurity, and to sever them in succession from the contest of allegations which I have previously mentioned.