sack of Constantinople in 1204. For ten years (1198--1208) through
the length and breadth of Germany there was ceaseless and sanguinary
conflict. In the great Italian towns party warfare, never hesitating
to resort to every kind of crime, had long been chronic. The history
of Sicily is one long record of cruelty, tyranny, and wrong--
committed, suffered, or revenged. Over the whole continent of Europe
people seem to have had no _homes;_ the merchant, the student,
the soldier, the ecclesiastic were always on the move. Young men made
no difficulty in crossing the Alps to attend lectures at Bologna, or
crossing the Channel to or from Oxford and Paris. The soldier or the
scholar was equally a free-lance, ready to take service whereever it
offered, and to settle wherever there was dread to win or money to
save. No one trusted in the stability of anything. [Footnote: M.
Jusserand's beautiful book, "La Vie Nomade," was not published till
1884, _i.e.,_ a year after this essay appeared.]

To a thoughtful man watching the signs of the times, it may well have
seemed that the hope for the future of civilization--the hope for any
future, whether of art, science, or religion-lay in the steady growth
of the towns. It might be that the barrier of the Alps would always
limit the influence of Italian cities to Italy and the islands of the
Mediterranean; but for the great towns of what is now Belgium and
Germany what part might not be left for them to play in the history
of the world? In England the towns were as yet insignificant
communities compared with such mighty aggregates of population as
were to be found in Bruges, Antwerp, or Cologne; but even the English
towns _were_ communities, and they were beginning to assert
themselves somewhat loudly while clinging to their chartered rights
with jealous tenacity. Those rights, however, were eminently
exclusive and selfish in their character. The chartered towns were