In the transition from the Carlovingian, to the Capetian dynasty, we should not forget that the monarchy was not strictly hereditary in any German state, but was for the most part merely elective; and it was only he, who had proved himself a valiant, prudent, and powerful defender of his nation, that became the man of the public choice. Royalty was then considered more in the light of an office, a charge, a peculiar calling, than of an inheritance or patrimony. The general idea of the Christian Empire, was a universal protectorate over all Christian nations and countries--a mighty central dominion founded on justice, while the great connecting and pervading power of the whole system was supposed to reside in the perfect unity of religious principles. When this religious unity was destroyed, the whole political edifice fell to pieces; and in the struggles of later times, the artificial relations founded on a mere mechanical balance of power, on a republican equality of states, without the foundation of Christian or any other solid principles, have furnished, as experience has shewn, but a very bad substitute for that old Christian brotherhood of the European states and nations; and have in the general subversion of Christian morality, produced a sort of polite disorder and refined anarchy. In the partition of the Carlovingian Empire--a partition which was only in accordance with those principles of descent which regulated the inheritance of the great families--we can trace an almost heroic, and if we might use the expression, a naïve patriarchal confidence in the duration of that religious unity; for it was only on such a basis that men deemed it possible to combine the advantage of the domestic, internal government of a country limited in extent, with the controul of one general superintending monarchy. When a man of such consummate prudence, such long foresight, and powerful understanding as Charlemagne deemed such a scheme not impracticable, and thought it possible to maintain the political unity of his empire, under the joint dominion of his sons, and by their subordination to their eldest brother; we should learn not to judge the plan with too much precipitation, and according to the notions of our times, and our present systems of policy. This first partition which Charlemagne had designed, was prevented by the hand of death. The entire division of the whole Carlovingian Empire into three distinct portions, was first effected by Lewis the Pious; but the perpetual family dissensions which occurred under his successors, the weakness or violence of their characters, and the various factions which arose, rendered totally impossible the maintenance of that union, which was originally sought to be perpetuated in the empire, and led to the final dismemberment and total dissolution of the old Empire of the Franks, when another dynasty succeeded to the imperial crown.