remembered that the Kings of Germany were acting for a series of centuries under a strange but powerful illusion. They called themselves (Kaisers) Cæsars, successors of Julius, Augustus, Tiberius, and the rest. They styled themselves emperors-emperors, not of Germany (they were only Kings of Germany), but of the Holy Roman Empire, the empire of Trajan and the Antonines, of Constantine and Theodosius and Justinian. Their efforts to give reality to this illusion by an effective conquest of Italy, and the resistance to their projects offered by the free Italian cities and the Papal power, were for a long time the central movements of European history. How these efforts failed of success-how, like the dog in the fable, the German chiefs lost their real crown in trying to seize the shadowy one-how they squandered their resources in Germany to procure the means, always insufficient, for the subjugation of Italy, and thus in the end lost both Italy and Germany-this is not the place to relate. But it is easy to understand how princes who were accustomed to think of themselves as heads of a Roman Empire, as successors of Roman law-givers, would favor the establishment of a Roman law-system in all parts of their dominions. We find the two greatest of the German emperors, Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II., in close relations with the famous civilians, the glossators of Bologna. Frederick Barbarossa, as was stated in the first lecture, sought and obtained

their aid in support of his pretensions as an Italian sovereign. He induced them to append some of his ordinances to their copies of the Corpus Juris, and to include them in their lectures and annotations. But the most effective service rendered by the imperial government toward the reception of the Roman law in Germany, was by ordaining that none but jurists, regularly trained and thoroughly accomplished, should preside in the higher courts of justice. Such judges had both the disposition and the ability to give effect to the principles of the Roman law in the tribunals over which they presided. The inferior courts could not easily hold out against the pressure brought to bear upon them from above. Thus through the whole system of courts, lower and higher, the Corpus Juris was recognized as the authoritative basis of private law.

In what has been already said of Southern France, it was implied that the state of things was different in the provinces of the North. It is true that here, too, the educated jurists made the same efforts to give currency and paramount force to the teachings of the Justinian books. But law-customs of Germanic origin were more deeply rooted here, and more tenacious of life, than in Southern France, and there was not the same disposition, as in Germany, among the political chiefs of the state, to favor the introduction of the new system. Hence it never gained the same commanding position as in the countries already mentioned. While

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the southern part of France was wont to be spoken of as the country of the written law, i. e., of the Corpus Juris, the northern part was designated by a corresponding name as the country of the customary law. Its fundamental law, which varied in the different provinces (Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, etc.), consisted everywhere of the so-called customs of the provinces (customs of Normandy, customs of Anjou, etc.). By the name customs" here is meant a body of traditional law, formed by a fusion of materials derived partly from the old Franks, partly from the conquered Gauls, with others of later origin, and handed down for a considerable time without being written out as a code, though usually collected sooner or later in a written system. From the formation of these customs it is apparent that there were Roman-law elements in them, mixed up with very much of a different character. Now, along with these customs which constituted the fundamental law of the province, the Corpus Juris had a recognized and authoritative but subordinate position as auxiliary law. Where the customary law had no rule applicable to the case in hand, such a rule might be cited from the Corpus Juris, and would then be binding on the court. The burden of proof here lay upon the party that invoked the Roman rule; he must show that the case was not provided for in the customary law, and that the way was thus open for an appeal to the Corpus Juris.

In Spain the Justinian books were received and treated in a manner substantially the same as in Northern France. At the basis lay a customary law, written or unwritten, which was of Spanish origin, but contained many Roman-law elements; while, along with this, the Corpus Juris was referred to in the courts, and respected by them as a body of auxiliary law, invested with binding authority so far as it supplied the deficiencies of the native system.

If now we quit the European main-land, and cross over to the island-realm of our own ancestors, we seem at first view to have parted company with the Roman law. The fundamental law of England is the so-called common law-common (that is) to all parts of the kingdom, in distinction from the local usages, which in former times were very numerous, usages peculiar to one or another district of the country. This common law is in the main an unwritten law; that is, the most of it never appeared in written, statutory form, as enactments of a legislative authority, a legislator, or a legislature. It is in the main a customary law, a body of traditional usages, some of them handed down from Anglo-Saxon times, some introduced by the Normans, but most of them evolved spontaneously, as it were, in the practice of the courts, without legislative interference or action. To the Justinian books it concedes no binding authority, even as auxiliary or supplementary law. It professes to supply its own

deficiencies by extending its own principles and analogies to new cases as they arise. Its courts never recognize the Roman law as having the force of law, except in those mixed cases which, from the foreign citizenship of a party or from some other cause, belong in part to an alien jurisdiction. It must be said even that, by many practitioners and professors of the common law, the civil law has been regarded with a feeling less favorable than mere indifference, with a tinge of jealousy or repugnance. Blackstone, the great expositor of the common law, seldom speaks of the civil law except in terms of disparagement. In general, he refers to it only to point out its inferiority to the common law; much like the Frenchman who avowed that he learned English in order to see how far inferior Shakespeare was to the great Corneille. He is fond of contrasting the free spirit of the common law with the despotic tendencies of the civil-a distinction unquestionably just as regards public law: that law, which defines the form and powers of the government, must of course be despotic if the government is a despotism, and liberal if the government is a commonwealth. But the public law of the Justinian books (including the criminal as well as the constitutional law) has never been adopted in the states of modern Europe. When the civil law is referred to as having a practical interest for modern times, it is a system of private law that we are to think of, and it