independence; but Messene, Scione, and Platea felt how hard it sometimes was to assert that right. A treaty graven on a stone went for little, an Amphictyonic decree went for less, when a powerful and ambitious city had other purposes to carry out. Such a treaty, such a decree, went for about as much as the agreement of a modern European congress when it binds itself to secure the freedom of Epirus and the good government of Armenia. The voice of some one overbearing city, say Sparta, backed by the will of the Great King, counted for far more. The rise of the Macedonian power under two renowned princes gave the Greek world for a short space a center and a head. International Law or its substitutes went for little when Alexander, flushed with Asiatic conquest, wrote to all the cities of Greece to restore their exiles. But when the Macedonian kingdom. again became only one power among many, the old state of things came back again with the needful changes. The world of Greece was no longer a world of cities only; it was a world in which cities, kingdoms, and confederations all played their part; a world in which diplomacy had its full run, in which the Eastern seas of Europe were ever covered by embassies crossing one another in their endless voyages to the court of this or that prince, to the assembly of this or that confederation. It was into this busy world of complicated International dealings that the power of Rome burst like a thunderbolt. All was at once changed. Under the Roman Peace, indeed in days long before the Roman Peace was formally established, as soon as Rome became by common consent the arbiter of the Mediterranean world, International Law had small opportunities left of showing its strength or its weakness. For a while the independent powers of the civilized world received as law whatever decrees the mightiest among them, the Roman Senate, thought good to put forth in each particular case. As kingdoms sank into provinces, as independent cities sank into municipalities, the law of the one commonwealth into whose substance they were in a manner merged became the immediate law of the whole civilized world, with the might of Cæsar Augustus as its sanction. There might still be a jus gentium between Rome and Parthia; to settle such questions as might arise at Antioch, at Gades, or at Eboracum, there was only the law of the Roman city, of which all other cities had become suburbs.

As long as any shadow of Roman power lasted, the theory that there lived on at Rome a central judgment-seat for the world was never wholly forgotten. As East and West became, not only separate, but hostile, as the Western Pontiff stepped for many purposes into the place of the Western Emperor, it was the ecclesiastical rather than the Imperial Rome which the nations sought as their common judge. Still in either case it was Rome that spoke; the world at least of Western Europe still acknowledged a center by the Tiber, though that center might have shifted from the Regia and the Septizonium to the Lateran and the Vatican. The world of which the Lateran and the Vatican were centers was presently cut short by a spiritual revolt. And that spiritual revolt was largely measured by national distinctions. As Eastern Europe, Greek and Slavonic Europe, had never admitted the spiritual dominion of the Western Rome, so now Teutonic Europe cast that dominion aside. Nations which had, in the teeth of Emperors, asserted their independence in the affairs of the world, now asserted their independence no less in the range of man's spiritual being. The Church of Rome remained, like the Empire of Rome, a power mighty and venerable, but a power confined, if not within the bounds of a single nation, at least within the bounds of a group of nations closely connected in history and speech. As there was a Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, so there was now a Holy Roman Church of the Latin-speaking folk. In one important point indeed we may say that the range of the new Roman power was narrowed yet further. There was a time when the bishopric of Rome, with all that the bishopric of Rome carried with it, was, in practice as well as in theory, open to men of all nations that admitted the spiritual power of Rome. Now, though no law forbids the election of a Pope of any nation, in practice the choice of the electors has long been confined to men of Italian birth. This privilege indeed might be looked on as in some sort a survival or revival of local Roman supremacy; more truly it is a falling back on days before the spiritual supremacy of Rome began. It is a falling back on times when the Roman church, still a local church though the first of local churches, naturally sought for its chiefs among its own members. But so far as it is a falling back in either sense, it is a falling back in a shape better fitted

for later times; here again the nation takes the place of the city; Italy takes the place of Rome. In short, the Roman Church, still in theory coextensive with the world, once really coextensive with Western Europe, has shrunk up into a body mainly Latin with a head exclusively Italian. It is indeed only in a broad and general sense that we can take such propositions as that the Latin nations clave to Rome while the Teutonic nations fell away. That there are many exceptions needs no proof. It is plain that the Roman Church can still boast herself of not a few Teutonic and Slavonic subjects. It is no less plain that there are here and there, though in smaller numbers, men of Latin speech, both in East and West, who are not her subjects. Still the general proposition is none the less true in its general sense. It marks, to say the least, general tendencies which run a certain course wherever there is no special cause to hinder them. If we look narrowly into each case of exception, we shall often see some special cause, commonly some political cause, which accounts for the anomaly. We may note further that, as the Empire became more purely German and the Papacy became more purely Latin, the old feuds between Empire and Papacy died out. The Austrian Emperors, Catholic chiefs of an Empire mainly Protestant, had no such warfare to wage with the Roman see as had been waged by the Franconians and the Swabians. But as Empire and Papacy alike came to be thus shut up within narrowed and definite limits, neither could any longer act as a common center, even for the Western lands. For better or for worse, the world has fallen back on an older state of things. Instead of a single Rome as the acknowledged head of all, instead of two rival Romes, each claiming the headship of its own half of the civilized world, it is now open to every nation, as in the earlier day it was open to every city, to do, as far as it finds to do it, that which is right in its own eyes. Every nation now, as every city then, may play the part of Rome for the years or for the moments through which it may keep enough of physical strength to play that part.

The latest times then are in truth a return to the earliest times, with this difference, that nations have taken the place of cities.

FRENCH LITERATURE

FRENCH LITERATURE: Anonymous. The story of " "Aucassin and Nicolete" is a twelfth-century journey through Love's Land; the hero being a Christian captive to the Saracens, and the heroine a Paynim captive among Christians. It is very short and is written in mingled prose and

poetry.

THE SONG OF ROLAND is the principal epic of French Literature. Its leading figure, Roland, is the traditional hero of Charlemagne's court, to whom are ascribed all the traits of medieval knighthood. His death in the battle of Roncesvalles (778 A.D.) and Charlemagne's vengeance on the Saracens form the subject of the poem.

(Anonymous)

THE SONG-STORY OF AUCASSIN AND NICOLETE

(Translated by ANDREW LANG)

'TIS of Aucassin and Nicolete.

Who would list to the good lay
Gladness of the captive gray?
'Tis how two young lovers met,
Aucassin and Nicolete,
Of the pains the lover bore
And the sorrows he outwore,
For the goodness and the grace,
Of his love, so fair of face.

Sweet the song, the story sweet
There is no man hearkens it,
No man living 'neath the sun
So outwearied, so foredone,
Sick and woeful, worn and sad,
But is healed, but is glad

'Tis so sweet.

So say they, speak they, tell they the Tale:

How the Count Bougars de Valence made war on Count Garin de Biaucaire, war so great, and so marvelous, and so

mortal that never a day dawned but alway he was there, by the gates and walls and barriers of the town, with a hundred knights, and ten thousand men-at-arms, horsemen, and footmen: so burned he the count's land, and spoiled his country, and slew his men. Now the Count Garin de Biaucaire was old and frail, and his good days were gone over. No heir had he, neither son nor daughter, save one young man only; such an one as I shall tell you. Aucassin was the name of the damoiseau: fair was he, goodly, and great, and featly fashioned of his body and limbs. His hair was yellow, in little curls, his eyes blue and laughing, his face beautiful and shapely, his nose high and well set, and so richly seen was he in all things good, that in him was none evil at all. But so suddenly overtaken was he of Love, who is a great master, that he would not, of his will, be dubbed knight, nor take arms, nor follow tourneys, nor do whatsoever him beseemed. Therefore his father and mother said to him:

"Son, go take thine arms, mount thy horse, and hold thy land, and help thy men, for if they see thee among them, more stoutly will they keep in battle their lives, and lands, and thine, and mine."

"Father," said Aucassin, "I marvel that you will be speaking. Never may God give me aught of my desire if I be made knight, or mount my horse, or face stour and battle wherein knights smite and are smitten again, unless thou give me Nicolete, my true love, that I love so well."

"Son," said the father, "this may not be. Let Nicolete go, a slave girl she is, out of a strange land, and the captain of this town bought her of the Saracens, and carried her hither, and hath reared her and let christen the maid, and took her for his daughter in God, and one day will find a young man for her, to win her bread honorably. Herein hast thou naught to make or mend, but if a wife thou wilt have, I will give thee the daughter of a king, or a count. There is no man so rich in France, but if thou desire his daughter, thou shalt have her."

"Faith! my father," said Aucassin, "tell me where is the place so high in all the world, that Nicolete, my sweet lady and love, would not grace it well? If she were Empress of Constantinople or of Germany, or Queen of France or England, it