I.

THE TOWN-MEETING.

Differences in outward aspect between a village in England and a village in Massachusetts.  Life in a typical New England mountain village.  Tenure of land, domestic service, absence of poverty and crime, universality of labour and of culture, freedom of thought, complete democracy.  This state of things is to some extent passing away.  Remarkable characteristics of the Puritan settlers of New England, and extent to which their characters and aims have influenced American history.  Town governments in New England.  Different meanings of the word “city” in England and America.  Importance of local self-government in the political life of the United States.  Origin of the town-meeting.  Mr. Freeman on the cantonal assemblies of Switzerland.  The old Teutonic “mark,” or dwelling-place of a clan.  Political union originally based, not on territorial contiguity, but on blood-relationship.  Divisions of the mark.  Origin of the village Common.  The mark-mote.  Village communities in Russia and Hindustan.  Difference between the despotism of Russia and that of France under the Old Regime.  Elements of sound political life fostered by the Russian village.  Traces of the mark in England.  Feudalization of Europe, and partial metamorphosis of the mark or township into the manor.  Parallel transformation of the township, in some of its features, into the parish.  The court leet and the vestry-meeting.  The New England town-meeting a revival of the ancient mark-mote.

Vicissitudes of local self-government in the various portions of the Aryan world illustrated in the contrasted cases of France and England.  Significant contrast between the aristocracy of England and that of the Continent.  Difference between the Teutonic conquests of Gaul and of Britain.  Growth of centralization in France.  Why the English have always been more successful than the French in founding colonies.  Struggle between France and England for the possession of North America, and prodigious significance of the victory of England.

II.

THE FEDERAL UNION.

Wonderful greatness of ancient Athens.  Causes of the political failure of Greek civilization.  Early stages of political aggregation,—­the hundred, the [Greek:  phratria], the curia; the shire, the deme, and the pagus.  Aggregation of clans into tribes.  Differences in the mode of aggregation in Greece and Rome on the one hand, and in Teutonic countries on the other.  The Ancient City.  Origin of cities in Hindustan, Germany, England, and the United States.  Religious character of the ancient city.  Burghership not granted to strangers.  Consequences of the political difference between the Graeco-Roman city and the Teutonic shire.  The folk-mote, or primary assembly, and the witenagemote,