The opinion almost universally accepted four or five years ago was to this effect: that the English people, when it came to Britain, was composed of a stalwart host of free men, who governed themselves by popular national councils, administered justice by popular local assemblies, and lived together in little village groups of independent yeomen. It was, indeed, recognised that there were gradations of rank--_eorl_ and _ceorl_, and the like,--and that some individuals were unfortunate enough to be slaves. But these and similar facts were not supposed to affect the general outlines of the picture; and even those writers who expressed themselves most guardedly as to this “primitive Teutonic polity,” proceeded by the subsequent course of their narrative to assume it as their starting point. And looking back on the intellectual history of the last fifty years, we can easily trace the forces which assisted in giving this view currency. To begin with, the historical movement of this century was undoubtedly the offspring of Romanticism; and with Romanticism the noble independence of the unlettered barbarian was an article of faith. Moreover, the discovery of modern constitutionalism “in the forests of Germany” harmonised with a comfortable belief, which was at one time very common. This was the belief to which Kingsley gave such eloquent expression, that the barbarian invasions were the predestined means of bringing into the effete civilisation of Rome the manly virtues of the North. For England the theory had the additional charm, during a period of democratic change, of satisfying that most unscientific but most English desire, the desire for precedent. An extension of the suffrage rose far above mere expediency when it became a reconquest of primitive rights. But, though we can understand how it was that historians came to discover the imposing figure of the free Teuton, it does not necessarily follow that they were mistaken. The disproof must be accomplished, if at all, by erudition equal to that by which the doctrine has been supported; and it has been the task of M. Fustel de Coulanges to assail with enormous learning and a cogent style almost every one of those propositions as to early mediæval constitutional history, which we were beginning to deem the secure achievements of German science.