Gneist's work is somewhat different in colouring and closely connected with a definite political theory. Tocqueville in France has done most to draw attention to the vital importance of local self-government in the development of liberal institutions; and Stubbs' history goes far to demonstrate Tocqueville's general view by a masterly statement as to the origins of English institutions. In Gneist's hands the doctrine of decentralisation assumes a particular shape by the fact that it is constructed on a social foundation; the German thinker has been trying all along to show that the English influence is not one of self-government only, but of aristocratical self-government. The part played by the gentry in local and central affairs is the great point of historical interest in Gneist's eyes. Even in the Saxon period he lays stress chiefly on the early rise of great property, and the great importance of 'Hlafords' in social organisation. He pays no attention to the village community, and chiefly cares for the landlord. But still even Gneist admits the original personal freedom of the great mass of the people, and his analysis of the English condition is based on the assumption, that it represents one variation of Teutonic development: this gives Gneist a place among the Germanists, although his views on particular subjects differ from those of other scholars of the same school.[23] [The Mark system.] Its chief representatives have acquired such a celebrity that it is hardly necessary to insist again, that excellent work has been done by them for the study of the past. But the direction of their work has been rather one-sided; it was undertaken either from the standpoint of political institutions or from that of general culture and external growth; the facts of agriculture, of the evolution of classes, of legal organisation were touched upon only as subsidiary to the main objects of general history. And yet, even from the middle of the century, the attention of Europe begins to turn towards those very facts. The 'masses' come up with their claims behind the 'classes,' the social question emerges in theory and in practice, in reform and revolution; Liberals and Conservatives have to reckon with the fact that the great majority of the people are more excited, and more likely to be moved by the problems of work and wages than by problems of political influence. The everlasting, ever-human struggle for power gets to be considered chiefly in the light of the distribution of wealth; the distribution of society into classes and conditions appears as the connecting link between the economical process and the political process. This great change in the aspect of modern life could not but react powerfully on the aspect of historical literature. G.F. von Maurer and Hanssen stand out as the main initiators of the new movement in our studies. The many volumes devoted by G.F. Maurer[24] to the village and the town of