above cited seems to be his final generalisation.] Whatever its social value, the feudal system is essentially a blend of Roman and barbarian points of polity; and in France, the place of its development, Gallic usage played a modifying part. It is dubiously described as growing up "from two great sources--the _beneficium_ and the practice of commendation"--the first consisting (_a_) in gifts of land by the kings out of their own estates, and (_b_) in surrenders of land to churches or powerful men, on condition that the surrenderer holds it as tenant for rent or service; while commendation consisted in becoming a vassal without any surrender of title. "The union of the beneficiary tie with that of commendation completed the idea of feudal obligation." The _beneficium_ again, "is partly of Roman, partly of German origin," and "the reduction of a large Roman population," nominally freemen under the Roman system, "to dependence," placed it on a common footing with the German semi-free cultivator, "and conduced to the wide extension of the institution. Commendation, on the other hand, may have had a Gallic or Celtic origin...." In one or other of these developments, the German _comitatus_ or chief's war-band, originally so different, "ultimately merged its existence." On the whole, then, the Teutons followed Gallo-Roman leads. [See Stubbs, i, 275, 276; cp. p. 4; and Bryce, _Holy Roman Empire_, pp. 123-24. Under Otto, observes Mr. Bryce (p. 125), "the institutions of primitive Germany were almost all gone." Elsewhere Bishop Stubbs decides (p. 10) that "the essence of feudal law is custom," and again (p. 71), that "no creative genius can be expected among the rude leaders of the tribes of North Germany. The new life started at the point at which the old had been broken off." Then in the matter of the feudal system, "the old" must have been mainly the Gallo-Roman, for feudalism arose in Frankish Gaul, not in Germany. In an early passage (p. 3) Dr. Stubbs confuses matters by describing the government of France as "originally little more than a simple adaptation of the old German polity to the government of a conquered race," but proceeds to admit that "the Franks, gradually uniting in religion, blood, and language with the [Romanised] Gauls, retained and developed the idea of feudal subordination...." The rest of the sentence again introduces error. For a good general view of the evolution of feudalism see Prof. Abdy's _Lectures on Feudalism_, 1890, lect. v-vii.]