And all this historical antiquarianism, as one might call it, which gathers round the Empire, is but one instance, though the most striking, of that eager wish to cling to the old forms, use the old phrases, and preserve the old institutions to which the annals of mediæval Europe bear witness. It appears even in trivial expressions, as when a monkish chronicler says of evil bishops deposed, _Tribu moti sunt_, or talks of the 'senate and people of the Franks,' when he means a council of chiefs surrounded by a crowd of half-naked warriors. So throughout Europe charters and edicts were drawn up on Roman precedents; the trade-guilds, though often traceable to a different source, represented the old _collegia_; villenage was the offspring of the system of _coloni_ under the later Empire. Even in remote Britain, the Teutonic invaders used Roman ensigns, and stamped their coins with Roman devices; called themselves 'Basileis' and 'Augusti[305].' Especially did the cities perpetuate Rome through her most lasting boon to the conquered, municipal self-government; those of later origin emulating in their adherence to antique style others who, like Nismes and Cologne, Zürich and Augsburg, could trace back their institutions to the _coloniæ_ and _municipia_ of the first centuries. On the walls and gates of hoary Nürnberg[306] the traveller still sees emblazoned the imperial eagle, with the words 'Senatus populusque Norimbergensis,' and is borne in thought from the quiet provincial town of to-day to the stirring republic of the middle ages: thence to the Forum and the Capitol of her greater prototype. For, in truth, through all that period which we call the Dark and Middle Ages, men's minds were possessed by the belief that all things continued as they were from the beginning, that no chasm never to be recrossed lay between them and that ancient world to which they had not ceased to look back. We who are centuries removed can see that there had passed a great and wonderful change upon thought, and art, and literature, and politics, and society itself: a change whose best illustration is to be found in the process whereby there arose out of the primitive basilica the Romanesque cathedral, and from it in turn the endless varieties of Gothic. But so gradual was the change that each generation felt it passing over them no more than a man feels that perpetual transformation by which his body is renewed from year to year; while the few who had learning enough to study antiquity through its contemporary records, were prevented by the utter want of criticism and of that which we call historical feeling, from seeing how prodigious was the contrast between themselves and those whom they admired. There is nothing more modern than the critical spirit which dwells upon the difference between the minds of men in one age and in another; which endeavours to make each age its own interpreter, and judge what it did or produced by a relative standard. Such a spirit