Hence, in the order of Providence, the dream of Charlemagne as to unbounded military aggrandizement could not be realized.  He could not revive the imperialism of Rome or Persia.  No man will ever arise in Europe who can re-establish it, except for a brief period.  It will be rebuked by the superintending Power, because it is fatal to the highest development of nations, because all its glories are delusory, because it sows the seeds of ruin.  It produces that very egotism, materialism, and sensuality, that inglorious rest and pleasure, which, as everybody concedes, prepared the way for violence.

And hence Charlemagne’s empire went to pieces as soon as he was dead.  There was nothing permanent in his conquests, except those made against barbarism.  He was raised up to erect barriers against fresh inroads of barbarians.  His whole empire was finally split up into petty sovereignties.  In one sense he founded States, “since he founded the States which sprang up from the dismemberment of his empire.  The kingdoms of Germany, Italy, France, Burgundy, Lorraine, Navarre, all date to his memorable reign.”  But these mediaeval kingdoms were feudal; the power of the kings was nominal.  Government passed from imperialism into the hands of nobles.  The government of Europe in the Middle Ages was a military aristocracy, only powerful as the interests of the people were considered.  Kings and princes did not make much show, except in the trappings of royalty,—­in gorgeous dresses of purple and gold, to suit a barbaric taste,—­in the insignia of power without its reality.  The power was among the aristocracy, who, it must be confessed, ground down the people by a hard feudal rule, but who did not grind the souls out of them, like the imperialism of absolute monarchies, with their standing armies.  Under them the feudal nobles of Europe at length recuperated.  Virtues were born everywhere,—­in England, in France, in Germany, in Holland,—­which were a savor of life unto life:  loyalty, self-respect, fidelity to covenants, chivalry, sympathy with human misery, love of home, rural sports, a glorious rural life, which gave stamina to character,—­a material which Christianity could work upon, and kindle the latent fires of freedom, and the impulses of a generous enthusiasm.  It was under the fostering influences of small, independent chieftains that manly strength and organized social institutions arose once more,—­the reserved power of unconquerable nations.  Nobody hates feudalism—­in its corruptions, in its oppressions—­more than I do.  But it was the transition stage from the anarchy which the collapse of imperialism produced to the constitutional governments of our times, if we could forget the absolute monarchies which flourished on the breaking up of feudalism, when it became a tyranny and a mockery, but which absolute monarchies flourished only one or two hundred years,—­a sort of necessity in the development of nations to check the insolence and overgrown power of nobles, but after all essentially