Of the sons of Charlemagne, Louis, the youngest, surnamed the _Debonnaire_, or gentle, was the only one who survived. He succeeded to all his father’s dominions, except Italy, which fell into the hands of Bernard, a grandson of Charlemagne. Louis, deficient in vigor of character, was unable to hold together the great empire left to him by his father. Having, among the first acts of his reign, given large portions of it to his children, the remainder of his life was spent in disgraceful quarrels with them; and after his death (840), the empire was formally divided――Lothaire, his eldest son, obtaining Lorraine and Provence; while Charles the Bald, a younger son, continued sovereign of the western parts of France; and Louis became king of Germany. Thus abruptly terminates the history of the second western empire. FRANCE FROM THE TIME OF CHARLES THE BALD TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY. During the reign of Charles the Bald, France first suffered from the attacks of the Normans, a race of bold and needy adventurers from the north of Europe. Their plundering invasions were continued for upwards of seventy years; till at length (912) the French king was compelled to purchase their amity by yielding to Rollo their leader the country afterwards from them called Normandy, of which Rouen was the capital. The first successor of Charles the Bald with whose name history has associated anything worth remembering, was Charles, surnamed the Fat (885). He was the son of that Louis to whom Germany had been before assigned, and was thus enabled to bring that country and France for a short time once more under a single ruler. In the turbulence of the times Charles was soon deposed; and during the century which followed, France, so lately the centre of an empire little less than that of Rome in the days of its Cæsars, was split up into a multitude of independencies, by nobles who would own only a very slender subjection to the kings. Out of these nobles at last sprang Hugh Capet (987), who was enabled, on the death of Louis V, to place himself on the throne. He was already possessed of great property, and proved to be also a prince of much ability and penetration. He established the royal residence at Paris, which his predecessors had deserted, and became the founder of a family which, in one of its branches, occupied the throne of France till the overthrow of monarchy in 1848. He deserves to be mentioned with honor, as being among the first of European kings who trusted to prudence, counsel, and moderation, rather than force of arms, in effecting his purposes. On his death (996), in the fifty-seventh year of his age and the tenth of his reign, he was succeeded by his son Robert, who had all his father’s equitable disposition without his vigor of character. He was subjected to a degree of tyranny on the part of the church of which perhaps the history of the world does not afford such another example. Robert had