call the restorer of the German kingdom never sought the Imperial crown seems of itself to point to the reign of the last Emperor before him, even if that Emperor had not been Frederick the Second, as the time when the Empire, as a power in itself, and not simply as a lofty title, a mighty memory, came to an end. Under Charles the Fifth the Empire seems to spring again to the fulness of its ancient power; but his abdication and death revealed a truth. When his titles of Empire passed to Ferdinand and his European position passed to Philip, it became clear that, however the titles of Empire might make the position of Charles more brilliant, his might had not really been the might of the Empire, but the might of Burgundy and Castile. The line, wherever we draw it, is an arbitrary one, unmarked either by formal changes or by events of the first greatness. I think we shall all agree that the Peace of Constanz and the Peace of Westfalia are the acts of a power which in the earlier time still kept much of a really Roman position, while in the later time all truly Roman character had passed from it. The change between the two states of things is gradual; at what point between the two we choose to draw the line is largely matter of opinion, one might say rather matter of taste or of feeling. In the East our case is much clearer. The event of 1204 is one that stands out with far greater distinctness than the event of 1250. No years in the Byzantine annals are more honourable than those in which they for a while cease to be Byzantine. It is when the Ῥωμαῖοι again become Byzantine that they again degenerate. If the name of Roman is to be held as an epithet of honour, at no time did prince and people better deserve that name than when they were banished from the New Rome. Adversity brought out vigorous qualities indeed in the Emperors of Nikaia and their subjects. Yet the fact that they were Emperors of Nikaia and not of Constantinople puts a wide barrier between them and their predecessors. The life of the Eastern Empire had been so thoroughly bound up in the possession of the Eastern Rome that no change could seem so great as that which gave the Eastern Rome to a Latin stranger. The Empire of Nikaia proved in the end the most vigorous and abiding among its fellows; but it had fellows. It was only one of a crowd of states, Greek and Latin, into which the Roman Empire of the East was broken in pieces. That the old Empire was utterly broken in pieces, that its old position had wholly passed away, is shown by unavoidable changes in language. It is now indeed hard to avoid using the word _Greek_. To be sure no Orthodox speaker of the Greek tongue--that is now the definition of the artificial Greek nation--dreamed of calling himself Ἕλλην; the Greeks, the Griffons, of Western speakers were still everywhere Ῥωμαῖοι in their own eyes. Strange indeed is the opposition of names in these days. When we find Ῥωμαῖοι and Λατῖνοι opposed, we seem to be carried back