Until the age of Odoacer and Theodoric, A.D. 493, there was nothing but ravage and ruin; but then the morning star of a brighter day arose, and under the auspices of these two monarchs, the foundation was commenced of the new social edifice. Alboin, king of the Lombards, was crowned in Italy, about A.D. 568, an epoch in which the great crisis which divided the ancient from the modern world was passed. This people were in Italy what the Saxons were in England. They were the bravest, and freest, as well as most barbarous of the Teutonic races. The conquest of the South not having cost them a drop of blood, it is said that the whole host, as they descended from their Alpine fastnesses, settled on the lands of fair Italy, rather as new tenants than conquerors. They carried along with them their wives and families, and cherished their adopted home with ardent enthusiasm. Their martial spirit eventually gave place to other not less active and laborious habits; and through their love of home, together with other domestic virtues, the German nations gave Italy, as well as Europe, that form of government of which our own age has witnessed the final catastrophe--the feudal system. The Roman frontier on the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, with its long line of castles, fortresses, and cities, lay mainly within the German territory. Here the nations of central Europe saw their brethren of a kindred race living under the control of laws which the freer classes sought to repel by force of arms; but they could but observe the superior advantages of civilization, and desire to penetrate those beautiful countries whence they were derived. Consequently the Suevi, the Saxons, and the Goths opposed to the Roman fortifications a living frontier-wall, and moving westward, not only possessed themselves of, but soon peopled with new nations and vivifying powers both the South and North. The protracted contest between the kings of Lombardy and the Greek Exarchs of Ravenna, provoked the arbitration of the Franks, and led to the establishment of their protectorate over Italy; as afterwards they became the head of the great Christian empire throned in Germany. Thenceforward the Franks constituted the leading state of the West. In the meantime its rival power in the East, the Byzantine empire, was sinking even lower in the scale of moral, political, and intellectual degradation. At the fitting moment, the Saracenic empire was called into provisional existence, and made to gather under the tedious uniformity of its despotic protection whatever of civilizing elements remained in the orient, and plant them where they might unfold a more salutary life from the fresh soil of the European West.