The best proof of how little real innovation was contained in this apparently innovating code, and which, therefore, renders it a most curious study for those who desire to know the true state of society in that part of Germany at the end of the eighteenth century, is that the Prussian nation scarcely seemed to be conscious of its publication. The legists alone studied it, and at the present day a great number of educated men have never read it. Note (VII.)--Page 21, last line. LANDS OF THE PEASANTS IN GERMANY. Amongst the peasantry there were many families who were not only freemen and owners of land, but whose estates formed a perpetual entail. The estate they possessed could not be divided, and was inherited by only one of the sons, usually the youngest, as is the case in certain English customs. This son was only bound to pay a certain portion to his brothers and sisters. These _Erbgüter_ of the peasantry were more or less common throughout Germany; for in no part of it was the whole of the soil swallowed up by the feudal system. In Silesia, where the nobility still retain immense domains, of which most of the villages formed a part, there were nevertheless villages owned entirely by their inhabitants, and entirely free. In certain parts of Germany, such as the Tyrol and Friesland, the predominant state of things was that the peasants owned the soil as _Erbgüter_. But in the greater part of Germany this kind of possession was but a more or less frequent exception. In the villages where it existed the small proprietors of this kind formed a sort of aristocracy among the peasantry. Note (VIII.)--Page 22, line 3. POSITION OF THE NOBILITY AND DIVISION OF LANDS ALONG THE BANKS OF THE RHINE.