THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE

Of those who in August 1806 read in the English newspapers that the emperor Francis II had announced to the diet his resignation of the imperial crown there were probably few who reflected that the oldest political institution in the world had come to an end. yet it was so the empire which a note issued by a diplomatist on the banks of the danube extinguished was the same which the crafty nephw of julius had won for himself against the powers of the east beneath the cliffs of actium and which had preserved almost unaltered through eighteen centuries of the and through the greatest changes in extent in power in chareacter a title and pretensions from which all meaning had long since departed. noththing else so directly linked the old world to the new nothing else displayed so many strange contrasts of the present and the past and summed up in those contrasts so much of european history froam the days of constantine till far down into the middle ages it was conjointly with the papacy the recognised centre and head of christendom exercising over the minds of men an influence such as its material strength could never hace commanded it is of this influence and of the causes that gave it power rather than of the external history of the empire that the following pages are designed to treat that history is indeed full of interest and brilliance of grand characters and striking situations but it is a subject too vast for andy single canvas. without a minuteness of deatil sufficient to make its scenes dramatic and give us a lively sympathy with the actors a narrative history can have little value and still less chyarm but to trace3 with any minuteness the career of the empire would be to write the history of christendowm from the fifth century to the twelfth of germany and itlay from the twelfthe to the nineteenth while even a narrative of more restricted scope wh ich should attempt to disengage froma a general account of the affairs of those countries the evcents but tyhe4 chef aim of the treatise will be to dwell more fully on the innernature of the emp[ire as the most gi9gnal instace of the fusin of roman and teutoni9ce elements in modern .