In this great event are comprehended two facts; the disappearance of the empire and the formation of the three kingdoms which took its place.  The first is easily explained.  The resuscitation of the Roman empire had been a dream of ambition and ignorance on the part of a great man, but a barbarian.  Political unity and central absolute power had been the essential characteristics of that empire.  They became introduced and established, through a long succession of ages, on the ruins of the splendid Roman republic, destroyed by its own dissensions, under favor of the still great influence of the old Roman senate, though fallen from its high estate, and beneath the guardianship of the Roman legions and imperial pretorians.  Not one of these conditions, not one of these forces, was to be met with in the Roman world reigned over by Charlemagne.  The nation of the Franks and Charlemagne himself were but of yesterday; the new emperor had neither ancient senate to hedge at the same time that it obeyed him, nor old bodies of troops to support him.  Political unity and absolute power were repugnant alike to the intellectual and the social condition, to the national manners and personal sentiments of the victorious barbarians.  The necessity of placing their conquests beyond the reach of a new swarm of barbarians and the personal ascendency of Charlemagne were the only things which gave his government a momentary gleam of success in the way of unity and of factitious despotism under the name of empire.  In 814, Charlemagne had made territorial security an accomplished fact; but the personal power he had exercised disappeared with him.  The new Gallo-Frankish community recovered, under the mighty but gradual influence of Christianity, its proper and natural course, producing disruption into different local communities and bold struggles for individual liberties, either one with another, or against whosoever tried to become their master.

As for the second fact, the formation of the three kingdoms which were the issue of the treaty of Verdun, various explanations have been given of it.  This distribution of certain peoples of Western Europe into three distinct and independent groups, Italians, Germans, and French, has been attributed at one time to a diversity of histories and manners; at another to geographical causes and to what is called the rule of natural frontiers; and oftener still to a spirit of nationality and to differences of language.  Let none of these causes be gainsaid; they all exercised some sort of influence, but they are all incomplete in themselves and far too redolent of theoretical system.  It is true that Germany, France, and Italy began, at that time, to emerge from the chaos into which they had been plunged by barbaric invasion and the conquests of Charlemagne, and to form themselves into quite distinct nations; but there were in each of the kingdoms of Lothaire, of Louis the Germanic, and of Charles the Bald, populations widely differing