Under the German kings Italy came under the same influences as the other two Imperial kingdoms. Principalities grew up; free cities grew up; but, while in Germany the principalities were the rule and the cities the exception, in Italy it was the other way. ♦Growth of a system of commonwealths in Italy.♦ The land gradually became a system of practically independent commonwealths. Feudal princes, ecclesiastical or temporal, flourished only in the north-western and north-eastern corners of the kingdom. But, if the range of the German cities was less wide, and their career less brilliant, than those of Italy, their freedom was more lasting. ♦Tyrants grow into princes.♦ The Italian cities gradually fell under tyrants, and the tyrants gradually grew into acknowledged princes. ♦Growth of the dominion of the Popes.♦ The Bishops of Rome too, by a series of claims dexterously pressed at various times, contrived to form the greatest of ecclesiastical principalities, one which stretched across the peninsula from sea to sea. ♦Four stages of Italian history.♦ The geographical history of Italy consists of four stages. In the first the kingdom fell asunder into principalities. In the second the principalities vanished before the growth of the free cities. In the third the cities were again massed into principalities, till in the fourth the principalities were at last merged in a kingdom of united Italy. * * * * * Under the Saxon and Frankish Emperors the old Lombard names of Neustria and Æmilia pass away. Several small marches lie along the Burgundian frontier, as _Savona_ on the coast, _Ivrea_ among the mountains to the north-west, between them _Montferrat_, _Vasto_, and _Susa_, whose princes, as special guardians of the passage between the two kingdoms, bore the title of Marquess in Italy. It was in this region that the feudal princes were strongest, and that the system of free cities had the smallest developement. ♦The Marquesses of Montferrat, 938-1533.♦ The Savoyard power was already beginning to grow up in the extreme north-west corner; but at this time a greater part in strictly Italian history is played by the Marquesses of Montferrat, who for many centuries kept their position as important feudal princes quite apart from the lords of the cities. In the north-east corner of the kingdom the place of the old Austria is taken by the border principalities where the Italian, the German, and the Slave all come in contact, and which fluctuated more than once between the Italian and the German crowns. We have here the great march of Verona, beyond it that of Friuli, Trent, the marchland of the marchland, between Verona and Bavaria, and the Istrian peninsula on the Slavonic side of the Hadriatic. Between the border districts on either side lay the central land, Lombardy, in the narrower sense, the chosen home of the free cities. ♦Growth of the Lombard cities.♦ Here, by the