have a right, but are bound to shed their light only upon those men who have deserved it by the eminence of their talents or the important results of their passage through life; rarity only can claim to escape oblivion.  And save two or three, a little less insignificant or less hateful than the rest, the Merovingian kings deserve only to be forgotten.  From A.D. 511 to A.D. 752, that is, from the death of Clovis to the accession of the Carlovingians, is two hundred and forty-one years, which was the duration of the dynasty of the Merovingians.  During this time there reigned twenty-eight Merovingian kings, which reduces to eight years and seven months the average reign of each, a short duration compared with that of most of the royal dynasties.  Five of these kings, Clotaire I., Clotaire II., Dagobert I., Thierry IV. and Childeric III., alone, at different intervals, united under their power all the dominions possessed by Clovis or his successors.  The other kings of this line reigned only over special kingdoms, formed by virtue of divers partitions at the death of their general possessor.  From A.D. 511 to 638 five such partitions took place.  In 511, after the death of Clovis, his dominions were divided amongst his four sons; Theodoric, or Thierry I., was king of Metz; Clodomir, of Orleans; Childebert, of Paris; Clotaire I., of Soissons.  To each of these capitals fixed boundaries were attached.  In 558, in consequence of divers incidents brought about naturally or by violence, Clotaire I. ended by possessing alone, during three years, all the dominions of his fathers.  At his death, in 561, they were partitioned afresh amongst his four sons; Charibert was king of Paris; Gontran of Orleans and Burgundy; Sigebert I., of Metz; and Childeric, of Soissons.  In 567, Charibert, king of Paris, died without children, and a new partition left only three kingdoms, Austrasia, Neustria, and Burgundy.  Austrasia, in the east, extended over the two banks of the Rhine, and comprised, side by side with Roman towns and districts, populations that had remained Germanic.  Neustria, in the west, was essentially Gallo-Roman, though it comprised in the north the old territory of the Salian Franks, on the borders of the Scheldt.  Burgundy was the old kingdom of the Burgundians, enlarged in the north by some few counties.  Paris, the residence of Clovis, was reserved and undivided amongst the three kings, kept as a sort of neutral city into which they could not enter without the common consent of all.  In 613, new incidents connected with family matters placed Clotaire II., son of Chilperic, and heretofore king of Soissons, in possession of the three kingdoms.  He kept them united up to 628, and left them so to his son, Dagobert I., who remained in possession of them up to 638.  At his death a new division of the Frankish dominions took place, no longer into three but two kingdoms, Austrasia being one, and Neustria and Burgundy the other.  This was the definitive