in the compilation and successive transformation of the barbaric laws. We shall seek, in our next lecture, what remained of the Roman laws to govern the Romans themselves, while the Germans were applying themselves to writing their own.

ELEVENTH LECTURE.

Perpetuity of the Roman law after the fall of the Empire Of the History of the Roman Law in the Middle Ages, by M. de SavignyMerits and deficiencies of this work-1. Roman law among the Visigoths-Breviarium Aniani, collected by command of AlaricHistory and contents of this collection-2. Roman law among the Burgundians-Papiani Responsorum-History and contents of this law-3. Roman law among the Franks-No new collection-The perpetuity of Roman law proved by various facts-Recapitulation.

You are now acquainted with the state of German and Roman society before the invasion. You know the general result of their first approximation, that is to say, the state of Gaul immediately after the invasion. We have just studied the barbaric laws; that is, the first labor of the German nations to adapt their ancient customs to their new situation. Let us now study Roman legislation at the same epoch, that is to say, that portion of the Roman law and institutions which survived the invasion and continued to rule the Gallic Romans. This is the subject of a German work, for some years past celebrated in the learned world, The History of the Roman Law in the Middle Ages, by M. de Savigny. The design of the author is more extended than ours, because he retraces the history of the Roman law, not only in France, but throughout Europe. He has also treated of what concerns France with more detail than I have been able to give to it here; and, before beginning the subject, I must request your attention a moment while I speak of his work.

The perpetuity of the Roman law, from the fall of the Empire until the regeneration of sciences and letters, is its fundamental idea. The contrary opinion was long and generally spread; it was believed that Roman law had fallen with the Empire, to be resuscitated in the twelfth century by the discovery of a manuscript of the Pandects, found at Amalfi. This is the error that M. de Savigny has wished to dissipate. His first two volumes are wholly taken up by researches into the traces of the Roman law from the fifth to the twelfth century, and in proving, by recovering its history, that it had never ceased to exist.

The demonstration is convincing, and the end fully attained. Still, the work, considered as a whole, and as an historical production, leaves room for some observations.

Every epoch, every historical matter, if I may so speak, may be considered under three different points of view, and imposes a triple task upon the historian. He can, nay, he should first seek the facts themselves; collect and bring to light, without any aim than that of exactitude, all that has happened. The facts once recovered, it is necessary to know the laws that have governed them; how they were connected; what causes have brought about those incidents which are the life of society, and propel it, by certain ways, towards certain ends.

I wish to mark with clearness and precision the difference of the two studies. Facts, properly so called, external and visible events, are the body of history; the members, bones, muscles, organs, and material elements of the past; their knowledge and description form what may be called historical anatomy. But for society, as for the individual, anatomy is not the only science. Not only do facts subsist, but they are connected with one another; they succeed each other, and are engendered by the action of certain forces, which act under the empire of certain laws. There is, in a word, an organization and a life of societies, as well as of the individual. This organization has also its science, the science of the secret laws which preside over the course of events. This is the physiology of history.

Neither historical physiology nor anatomy are complete and veritable history. You have enumerated the facts, you have followed the internal and general laws which produced them. Do you also know their external and living physiog nomy ? Have you them before your eyes under individual and animate features? This is absolutely necessary, because these facts, now dead, have lived-the past has been the present; and unless it again become so to you, if the dead are not resuscitated, you know them not; you do not know history. Could the anatomist and physiologist surmise man if they had never seen him living?

The research into facts, the study of their organization, the reproduction of their form and motion, these are history such as truth would have it. We may accept but one or other of these tasks; we may consider the past under such or such a point of view, and propose such or such a design;

we may prefer the criticism of facts, or the study of their laws, or the reproduction of the spectacle. These labors may be excellent and honorable; but it must never be forgotten that they are partial and incomplete; that this is not history-that history has a triple problem to resolve; that every great historical work, in order to be placed in its true position, should be considered and judged of under a triple relation.

Under the first, as a research of, and criticism upon, historical material elements, The History of the Roman Law in the Middle Ages is a very remarkable book. Not only has M. de Savigny discovered or re-established many unknown or forgotten facts, but (what is much more rare and difficult) he has assigned to them their true relation. When I say their relation, I do not yet speak of the links which unite them in their development, but merely of their disposition, of the place which they occupy in regard to one another, and of their relative importance. Nothing is so common in history, even with the most exact knowledge of facts, as to assign to them a place other than that which they really occupied, of attributing to them an importance which they did not possess. M. de Savigny has not struck on this rock; his enumeration of facts is learned and equal; and he distributes and compares them with like knowledge and discernment; I repeat, that, in all that belongs to the anatomical study of that portion of the past which forms the subject of his work, he has left scarcely anything to be desired.

As a philosophical history, as a study of the general and progressive organization of facts, I cannot say so much for it. It does not appear to me that M. de Savigny has proposed this task to himself, or that he has even thought of it. Not only has he omitted all attempt to place the particular history upon which he occupied himself in relation with the general history of civilization and of human nature, but even within his own subject, he has troubled himself but little with any systematic concatenation of facts; he has not in the least considered them as causes and effects, in their relation of generation. They present themselves in his work, totally isolated, and having between them no other relation than that of dates, a relation which is no true link, and which gives to facts neither meaning nor value.

Nor do we meet, in any greater degree, with poetical truth; facts do not appear to M. de Savigny under their living phy

siognomy. It is true, upon such a subject, he had neither characters nor scenes to reproduce; his personages are texts, and his events publications or abrogations of laws. Still these texts and legislative reforms belonged to a society which had its manners and its life; they are associated with events more suited to strike the imagination—to invasions, foundations of states, &c. There is among these a certain dramatic aspect to seize; in this M. de Savigny has failed; his dissertations are not marked with the hue of the spectacle with which they are connected; he does not reproduce the external and individual traits of history any more than its internal and general laws.

And do not suppose that in this there is no other evil than that of a deficiency, and that this absence of philosophical and poetical truth is without influence upon the criticism of the material elements of history. More than once M. de Savigny, from not properly taking hold of the laws and physiognomy of facts, has been led into error regarding the facts themselves; he has not deceived himself as to texts and dates; he has not omitted or incorrectly reported such or such an event; he has committed a species of error for which the English have a word which is wanting in our tongue, misrepresentation, that is to say, he has spread a false hue over facts, arising, not from any inaccuracy in particular details, but from want of verity in the aspect of the whole, in the manner in which the mirror reflects the picture. In treating, for example, of the social state of the Germans before the invasion, M. de Savigny speaks in detail of the free men, of their situation and their share in the national institutions; his knowledge of historical documents is extensive and correct, and the facts alleged by him are true; but he has not rightly considered the mobility of situations among the barbarians, nor the secret contest between those two societies, the tribe and the warlike band, which co-existed among the Germans, nor the influence of the latter in altering the individual equality and independence which served as the foundation of the former, nor the vicissitudes and successive transformations to which the condition of the free men was subjected by this influence. Hence arises, in my opinion, a general mistake in the painting of this condition; he has

'T. i., pp. 160-195.