measures were prescribed by law, and any departure from honest dealing in this respect was visited with the severest penalties. Officers were appointed in every town for the detection of false weights and the sale of spurious merchandise. The laws of hygiene were understood and enforced with a degree of intelligence unknown to many European communities even at the present day. Unwholesome provisions could not be exposed for sale in the markets. Trades offensive to the senses or injurious to public health were prohibited within the walls of cities. A depth was prescribed for graves, that the exhalations proceeding from them might not contaminate the air. No carrion was permitted to be left on the highways. In questions of legislation, as well as in those relating to political economy, the kingdom of Sicily was far in advance of its contemporaries. The constitution of England, and especially the organization of the House of Commons, owe much to the Sicilian Parliament. While the duties of its members were ordinarily confined to the registering of royal edicts and the imposition of taxes, it presents the first example of a truly elective, representative assembly that is mentioned in history. From the institutions of Frederick, his relative, Alfonso X. of Castile, appropriated many of the legislative and judicial provisions of Las Siete Partidas,--a compilation for which that monarch is principally entitled for his fame. France and Germany also ultimately experienced the imperceptible but potent impulse communicated to society by the supremacy of law over theology, which had its beginning in Sicily during the thirteenth century.