Though the word _Salic_ is by no means uncertain in its meaning, its etymology is so very obscure and undecided as to have puzzled all the French, German, and English philologists who have flourished since the invention of printing. According to Worcester’s Dictionary the word was applied to a body of laws framed by the Salians or Salian Franks, about the beginning of the fifth century, but who the Salians were, no one has yet been able to explain. The derivation from the River Saal, which Holinshed calls _Sala_, is wholly untenable, as well as the imputation on the virtue of the German ladies of the district through which that river runs. The Salic law never prevailed in any part of Germany, but was peculiar to such Keltic nations as France and Spain. It continued to prevail in France until the abolition of the monarchy under Louis Philippe in 1848, and was never a question so much as debated in the Imperial monarchy under the first or the third Napoleons. In Spain it was abrogated only by Ferdinand VII., within living memory, in favour of his daughter, the infant Isabella, whose accession to the throne led to a civil war, which cannot yet be said to have ended, as long as Don Carlos or his family exist and keep their pretensions alive. On this subject Voltaire, in his “Philosophical Dictionary,” has some pithy remarks. According to Froissart he says, “The kingdom of France is of such great nobleness that it never can allow the succession to go to a female,” and adds, “but one must confess that this decision is very unpolite for England, for Naples, for Hungary, and for Russia, in which latter country four reigning Empresses have sat upon the throne.”