The old _Lotharingian_ divisions, as we see them in the time of the great duchies, utterly died out. ♦Lower Lotharingia.♦ The states which arose in the _Lower Lotharingia_ are among those which silently fell off from the German Kingdom to take a special position under the name of the _Netherlands_. ♦Duchy of Lothringen or Lorraine.♦ The special duchy of _Lothringen_ or _Lorraine_ was held to belong to the circle of Upper Rhine. ♦Elsass.♦ _Elsass_ also formed part of the same circle, the circle which was specially cut short by the encroachments of France. ♦Circle of Swabia.♦ The _Swabian_ circle answered more nearly than most of the new divisions to the old Swabian duchy, as that duchy stood without counting the marchland of Elsass. No part of Germany was more cut up into small states than the old land of the Hohenstaufen. A crowd of principalities, secular and ecclesiastical, among them the lesser principalities of the Hohenzollern House, of free cities, and of outlying possessions of the houses of Austria made up the main part of the circle. ♦Ecclesiastical towns of Swabia.♦ _Strassburg_, _Augsburg_, _Constanz_, _St. Gallen_, _Chur_, _Zürich_, are among the great bishoprics and other ecclesiastical foundations of the old Swabia. ♦Part of Swabia becomes Switzerland.♦ But, as I shall show more fully in another section, large districts in the south-east, those which formed the _Old League of High Germany_, had practically fallen away from the kingdom before the new division was made, and were therefore never reckoned in any circle. ♦Baden. | Württemberg.♦ Two Swabian principalities, the mark of _Baden_, and _Württemberg_, first county and then duchy, came gradually to the first place in this region. As such they still remain, preserving in some sort a divided representation of the old Swabia. * * * * *