constitution is now inseparably associated with the enjoyment of the largest measure of freedom was then noted as the most advantageous market for the purchase of slaves. In the cultivated society of Constantinople, learned men believed that Britain was a region of pestilence and horrors, whither, as to a place of eternal punishment, the spirits of the Franks were ferried at midnight by a tribe of weird fishermen, who, by reason of this service, were exempted from certain burdens and enjoyed peculiar privileges. Among the luxurious ecclesiastics of Gaul, the slaves imported from Britain were greatly esteemed as being both cheap and serviceable; and the sacred office of priest or abbot was not degraded by the ownership of hapless beings in whose unnatural parents the feelings of humanity and the instincts of affection had been subordinated to the debasing passion of avarice. The general complexion of affairs in Gaul offered a striking analogy to that prevailing in Spain at the time of the subversion of the kingdom of the Visigoths. In one respect, however, a difference more apparent than real existed; no monarch was deluded by the professed allegiance, and was at the same time constantly threatened by the treasonable plots of his subjects. A dynasty of puppet kings, restricted to a limited territory, displayed amidst every temptation to sensual indulgence the idle pomp of sovereignty. A race of hardy warriors and statesmen, ignorant of letters, experienced in arms, controlled, by the power of military enthusiasm and the superior influence of diplomatic ability, the destinies of the Frankish nation. With the exception of the clergy, whose attainments were at the best but superficial, the people were plunged into the deepest ignorance. In the regions of the North and East the influence of the idolatrous Germans and Scandinavians had retarded the progress of Christianity. Elsewhere, however, a mongrel religion, in which were incorporated the mummeries of polytheistic worship, the degrading superstitions and sanguinary rites of the Saxons, and the worst features of the Arian heresy, prevailed. This debased form of faith, which recognized neither the tolerance of Paganism nor the charity of the Gospel, satisfied the spiritual requirements of a barbarian populace. In one province idolatry was practised. In another, the principles of Christianity were in the ascendant. Not infrequently these forms of worship existed side by side; and within the sound of the cathedral bell the incense of sacrifice rose from the altars of the Teutonic deities, or the haruspex exercised his mysterious office, and, grovelling in the steaming vitals of the newly slaughtered victim, read, in the shape of the liver or the folds of the entrails, the signs of the future and the unerring decrees of fate.