Albana Mignaty, Marguerite: Sketches of the historical past of Italy: from the fall of the Roman Empire to the earliest revival of letters and arts (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1876)

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CHAPTER IV.
Charlemagne and his Era—Introduction of Teutonic Influence—Al-
liance between the Tiara and Crown—Commencement of Medieval
Times.
THE law of transmutation presides over the moral and
intellectual development of society at large, and
over the preservation of material interests. In spite of
continual modification and mutation in all things human,
the course of certain moral, intellectual, and political
phenomena has been evolved with a continuous regularity
which has assumed the permanent form of “law.” The
same law continues in action now. “ The states of
Europe,” says Gervinus, “ since the commencement of
the Christian era, form as connected and general a
history as that of the group of states of the Greek Penin-
sula and its colonies in antiquity. The same order and
the same law are revealed in the course of their internal
development in both periods ; and in the history of the
whole human race this law may be again observed in its
largest manifestations. From Oriental despotism to aris-
tocracy, from the government of the ancients and the middle
ages founded on slavery and serfdom, to the state policy of
modern times, which is yet in the course of development,
a regular progress may be perceived from the intellectual
and civil freedom of one alone, to that of the few and of
the many. But where states have completed their term
of existence we may again observe a descent in civiliza-
tion, freedom, and power from the highest point in this
ascending scale of development, from the many to the
few, and from the few again to one alone.
“ This law may be traced throughout history in every
separate state as well as a special group of states.”1
1 Gervinus. Introduction to the History of the Nineteenth Century.
Sec. ii., p. 3.
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