German, it was by choosing a German king and in some sort adopting his German subjects. If the Eastern Empire became Greek, it was because the un-Greek parts were lopped off from it. To this process the finishing stroke was put by the event of 800. Latin Italy then parted, even in name, from its allegiance to the Eastern Rome. The prince who reigned at Constantinople was by the truest political succession Emperor of the Romans; but the Romans who were left for him to rule over were well nigh wholly Greek. In this way therefore, and largely by virtue of the same act, the Eastern Empire became Greek, while the Western Empire became German. The one became Greek through one of its old elements obtaining an exclusive predominance; the other became German by bringing in an element altogether new. But in becoming severally German and Greek, neither ceased to be Roman. The Roman spirit might die out; but the Roman succession went on; the Roman tradition was never broken. In the East the tie to the Roman past was never snapped; if it passed away, it was because the Romans of the East seemed almost to forget that there had ever been any Romans but themselves or any Rome but their own. In the West, on the other hand, the tie to the Roman past was never formally snapped any more than in the East; but it passed away because it was overshadowed and stifled by the un-Roman institutions that grew up by the side of it. The Augustus of the East was Emperor of the Romans and nothing more; it was strange that the diadem of Jovius should be conferred by a Christian unction, but what the Christian unction of the East did confer was the diadem of Jovius and none other. The Augustus of the West was also King of Germany, of Italy, and of Burgundy; Aachen, Milan, Arles, had their share in making him as well as the Eternal City. Take away the German, the Italian, and the Burgundian realms, and it might be hard to find on the map the lands over which Cæsar ruled purely in his character of Cæsar. Again, in the East, wherever the Emperor reigned at all, he truly reigned. Did the Empire reach once more from Ister to Orontes, from Ararat to Ætna? Was it shut up within a corner of Thrace and a fragment of the coast of Asia? In either case, be the Empire great or small, be its sovereign the mighty Macedonian or the trembling Palaiologos, wherever he was sovereign at all, he was βασιλεύς and αὐτοκράτωρ in the fullest sense. In the West, through the growth of a new set of ideas and institutions, the Emperor, still keeping all his titles, all his formal dignity, still worshipped with a ceremonial only less stately than that of his Eastern brother, gradually sank into a mere chief of unruly feudatories, into a mere President, it might seem, of a Confederation in which every member was stronger than the head. An Eastern Emperor might expect to be slain or blinded to make room for another; but, while he kept his life and his eyes, his will was undisputed.