and has become the head of the united nation. ♦The great Duchies under the Saxon and Frankish Kings, 919-1125.♦ Starting from the division of 887, we shall find several important landmarks in the history of the German kingdom which may help us in this most difficult part of our work. Under the Saxon and Frankish kings we see the great duchies still forming the main divisions, while the kingdom is enlarged by Slavonic conquests to the east and by the definite adhesion of Lotharingia to the west. ♦Decline of the Duchies under the Swabian Kings, 1137-1254.♦ Under the Swabian kings we see the break-up of the great duchies. In the partition of Saxony the process which was everywhere silently and gradually at work was formally carried out in the greatest case of all by Imperial, and national authority. ♦End of the _Gauverfassung_. | Growth of territorial Principalities.♦ The _Gauverfassung_, the immemorial system of Teutonic communities, now finally changes into a system of territorial principalities, broken only by the many free cities and the few free districts which owned no lord but the King. ♦Growth of the march powers. 1254-1512.♦ During this period too we see the beginnings of some of the powers which became chief at a later day, the powers of the eastern marchland, _Brandenburg_, _Austria_, _Saxony_ in the later sense. The time from the so-called _Interregnum_ to the legislation under Maximilian is marked by the further growth of these powers. ♦Growth of the House of Austria.♦ It is further marked by the beginning of that connexion of the Austrian duchy, and of the Imperial crown itself, with lands beyond the bounds of the Kingdom and the Empire which led in the end to the special and anomalous position of the House of Austria as an European power. ♦Separation of Switzerland, 1495-1648. | Of the Netherlands, 1430-1648.♦ During the same period comes the practical separation of _Switzerland_ and the _Netherlands_ from the German kingdom. In short it was during this age that Germany in its later aspect was formed. ♦Legislation under Maximilian, 1495-1512.♦ The legislation of Maximilian’s reign, the attempts then made to bring the kingdom to a greater degree of unity, have left their mark on geography in the division of Germany into _circles_. ♦Division into circles, 1500-1512.♦ This division, though it was not perfectly complete, though it did not extend to every corner of the kingdom, was strictly an administrative division of the kingdom itself as such; but the mapping out of the circles, the difference of which in point of size is remarkable, was itself affected by the geographical extent of the dominions of the princes who held lands within them. ♦Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648.♦ The seventeenth century is marked by the results of the Thirty Years’ War and of other changes. ♦Powers holding lands within and without Germany.♦ Its most important geographical result was to carry on the process which had begun with the Austrian House,