But we must leave the Italian towns to look at the cities which sprang up in the northern parts of Europe. The Lombardic cities were Roman municipalities, keeping up a struggle for existence after the fall of the empire, and Venice and Amalfi were communities, which sprung up immediately upon that fall, imbibing some elements of Roman civilisation, intermingled with others of an oriental cast, derived from their dependence on the eastern emperors and their subsequent intercourse with the Saracens; but the cities to which attention is now to be directed, had their origin in feudal times; they arose amidst that state of disorder into which society was plunged by the inroads of the northern barbarians; they exhibited new developments of social life and manners; they derived their spirit of independence from the Gothic races who founded them; their progress was a struggle with their feudal lords, and their final establishment and prosperity secured the overthrow of the feudal system. The former were in a great measure but the reflection of ancient civilisation, the latter were the infant, but vigorous forms of modern civilisation. There we see the Roman city, here the German borough. The ancient Germans, according to Tacitus, had no cities. The people lived a wandering life, and when they settled anywhere for a time, they erected for themselves rude, detached, and scattered dwellings.[1] Long after the invasion of the south of Europe the Gothic tribes retained their uncitizenlike habits. "Till the reign of Charlemagne," observes Hallam, "there were no towns in Germany, except a few that had been erected on the Rhine and Danube by the Romans. A house with its stables and farm buildings, surrounded by a hedge, or inclosure, was called a court, or, as we find it in our law books, a curtilage--the toft, or homestead, of a more genuine English dialect. One of these, with the adjacent domain of arable fields and woods, had the name of a villa, or manse. Several manses composed a march, and several marches formed a pagus, or district. From these elements in the progress of population arose villages and towns." The character of these tofts, or homesteads, is well illustrated by a passage from Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven:--"A toft is a homestead in a village, so called from the small tufts of maple, elm, ash, and other wood, with which dwelling-houses were anciently overhung. Even now it is impossible to enter Craven without being struck with the isolated homesteads, surrounded by their little garths, and overhung with tufts of trees. These are the genuine tofts and crofts of our ancestors, with the substitution only of stone to the wooden crocks and thatched roofs of antiquity." The little towns which thus sprung up were subject of course to the feudal lord in whose domain they were situate; but, probably, the condition of their inhabitants was preferable to that of his dependents, who lived in the open country.