Hence the principal cause of the poverty of record through all this
period of slow if steady growth; and the disappointed investigator
must in some measure console himself with such a reason. It may be
asked, what of the various local histories of different towns, whose
authors seldom fail to give highflown accounts of their native cities,
even in the remotest and darkest ages of their history? To this
question there is a double answer: in the first place the uttermost
caution must be enjoined in using such material; not only in
separating fact from baseless tradition of a much later period, but in
making large allowance for the heavy strain which a strong feeling of
local patriotism, or civism, puts upon the conscience of the author.
In the second place it must be remembered that most of such histories,
or at least of the monkish or other records from which they derive
their source and most of their material, were written to the glory or
under the auspices of some dominant noble family or ecclesiastical
institution, to whose laudation in ages past and present the humble
author devotes all the resources of his mind, and I am afraid far too
often of his imagination.

Let us now cast a glance at the exhausted civilization of the towns of
Northern Italy, where the formal shell of Roman organization still
remained, after the vigor and life which had produced it had long been
destroyed. To describe the condition of the Roman _municipia_ at the
time of the Teutonic invasions is but to tell a part of the story of
the fall of the Roman Empire. The municipal system, which from the
names and duties of its officers would seem to represent a surprising
amount of local independence in matters of administration, even a
collection of small almost free republics, had lost all its strength
and all its vital power by the grinding exactions of a centralized
despotism, which was compelled to support its declining power by