In a high order of ideas, what great facts serve as a foundation to our history and that of the modern world! We have first royalty, which, weak and debased under the Merovingians, rises and establishes itself energetically under Pépin and Charlemagne, to degenerate under Louis le Débonnaire and Charles le Chauve. After having dared a second time to found the Empire of the Caesars, it quickly sees its sovereignty replaced by feudal rights, and all its rights usurped by the nobles, and has to struggle for many centuries to recover its rights one by one. Feudalism, evidently of Germanic origin, will also attract our attention, and we shall draw a rapid outline of this legislation, which, barbarian at the onset, becomes by degrees subject to the rules of moral progress. We shall ascertain that military service is the essence itself of the "fief," and that thence springs feudal right. On our way we shall protest against civil wars, and shall welcome emancipation and the formation of the communes. Following the thousand details of the life of the people, we shall see the slave become serf, and the serf become peasant. We shall assist at the dispensation of justice by royalty and nobility, at the solemn sittings of parliaments, and we shall see the complicated details of a strict ceremonial, which formed an integral part of the law, develop themselves before us. The counters of dealers, fairs and markets, manufactures, commerce, and industry, also merit our attention; we must search deeply into corporations of workmen and tradesmen, examining their statutes, and initiating ourselves into their business. Fashion and dress are also a manifestation of public and private customs; for that reason we must give them particular attention. And to accomplish the work we have undertaken, we are lucky to have the conscientious studies of our old associates in the great work of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to assist us: such as those of Emile Bégin, Elzéar Blaze, Depping, Benjamin Guérard, Le Roux de Lincy, H. Martin, Mary-Lafon, Francisque Michel, A. Monteil, Rabutau, Ferdinand Séré, Horace de Viel-Castel, A. de la Villegille, Vallet de Viriville. As in the volume of the Arts of the Middle Ages, engraving and chromo-lithography will come to our assistance by reproducing, by means of strict fac-similes, the rarest engravings of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the most precious miniatures of the manuscripts preserved in the principal libraries of France and Europe. Here again we have the aid of the eminent artist, M. Kellerhoven, who quite recently found means of reproducing with so much fidelity the gems of Italian painting. Paul Lacroix (Bibliophile Jacob). Table of Contents. Condition of Persons and Lands