Finally, there existed a fourth cause of civilisation, one which it is impossible accurately to weigh, but which is not the less real on that account--namely, the influence of great men. No one can say why a great man comes at a particular era, or what he infuses of his own into the development of the world; the secret remains with Providence, but the fact is certain. There are men whom the spectacle of anarchy or of social stagnation strikes and distresses, who are intellectually shocked thereat as with a fact which should not be, and who become possessed with an uncontrollable desire to change it, and to plant some rule, some uniformity, regularity, and permanency in the world before them: a terrible, and often a tyrannical power, committing a thousand iniquities and errors, for human weakness accompanies it; yet a glorious and salutary power, for it gives to humanity a vigorous jerk, an admirable impulse. These different causes and influences originated various attempts to emancipate European society from the clutch of barbarism, in the epoch stretching from the fifth to the ninth century. The first of these attempts (although it may have had little effect, yet requires to be noticed, for it emanated from the barbarians themselves) was the digesting the barbarian laws. Between the sixth and eighth centuries, the laws of almost all the barbarous tribes were written. Formerly it was otherwise, these people having mere customs for governance before they established themselves on the ruins of the Roman Empire. There were the laws of the Burgundians, of the Salian and Ripuarian Franks, of the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Saxons, the Frisons, the Bavarians, the Allemanni, &c. Here was evidently a commencement of civilisation, an endeavour to transfer society to the empire of general and regular principles. It was impossible for much success to attend it, for it presented the laws of a society which no longer existed, the laws of the social state of the barbarians before their establishment on the Roman territory, before they had changed a wandering for a sedentary life, and the condition of nomad warriors for that of proprietors. Here and there are found some articles as to the lands which the barbarians had acquired, and as to their relations with the old inhabitants of the country, and even attempts are made to regulate some of the new circumstances with which they were mixed up; but the ground-work of the majority of these laws is the ancient life and state of things in Germany, which were utterly inapplicable to the new society, and have had but little influence in its development.