The empire of Charles, though it was the concrete creation of an ideal government crudely understood and most inadequately worked out, illustrated the liberty-loving principles of the Germanic peoples who were gathered in its fold. In this respect, with all its imperfections, the rule of the great Frankish monarch is more closely allied to the political principles of modern times than were the more ambitious and more logical creations of the conquerors who preceded and who followed him. Unconsciously, it may be, his system of government gave scope for local diversities and recognized rights of deep-planted traditions with a generosity which is characteristic not of empires such as those of Cæsar and Napoleon, but of federal republics of the type of the United States, and the Federation of the Swiss Cantons. When he aimed at uniformity he did not lose sight of the fact that he was the ruler of heterogeneous nationalities, on whose good-will and coöperation the permanence of the Empire was dependent. The pressure of centralization was lightly exercised, simply because in the Emperor’s mind the ideas of Roman rule had to pass through the medium of German tribal tradition. There was no steam roller set to work to equalize, if not to pulverize, the component parts of his realm. The divisions were not destroyed, but were rather combined in a higher political unity. The kingdom of the West Goths was at least preserved, though it had less of a definite character than the Lombard kingdom, which the Emperor took special pains to preserve in its integrity. Even the traditions of the Ostrogoths were allowed a value in so far as they stood for a strenuous opposition to the imperial policy of uniformity of administration and to the economic sacrifice of the local centers to the purposes of world politics. Lombard influence had overcome both Ostrogothic and Roman rule; it was irreconcilable, and stood for the stubborn and conservative standpoint that made the first Germanic invaders difficult to assimilate in the provinces of the Roman Empire, where by force of arms they became the ruling class. A similar obstinacy, with its preservation of the original political type, marked the Lombard kingdom and duchies which Charles had conquered. A picturesque example of local initiative was not crowded out by the Frankish overlordship in Venice; the seafaring community came into being in a favored spot, on the confines of the two empires, too remote to be crushed from Constantinople, and protected from the Western ruler by a few leagues of shallow sea.