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 must have done much to weaken clanship and strengthen the power of the chiefs long before the inroads of the barbarians commenced. This aristocracy of chiefs had as little interest in treasuring up the folk-songs of their tribesmen (which could not but contain many a reminder of the social equality typified by the story of the Vase of Soissons) as the monks; and, even if they had the desire to perpetuate such songs, they lacked the requisite degree of education. Thus on all sides causes combined to obscure the very existence of any rude literary beginnings save those which the individualising life of the chiefs and, later on, the seigneurs permitted, or the laborious learning of the monks attempted in their Latin world-language in the belief that it alone was the proper instrument of literature. Local isolation and feudal individualism could not create national languages or sentiments; the universal religion of Christ had its world-language already made; it seemed for a time as if no social maker of national literature were to arise.

We cannot now enter upon that vast field at present attracting the labours of antiquarians, jurists, historical economists—the changes undergone by the clans of barbaric Europe in their degradation into the serfs of feudal lords. Even a general picture of these changes could not fail to introduce features more or less untrue in certain places, and suggesting a transition in some cases too rapid, in others too slow. In Northern Italy, for example, town life and the municipal system, upon which Rome's empire had been based, were so strong that the barbarians readily adopted city organization, and feudalism as known elsewhere was checked in its development. In Southern France, also, the municipal system continued to hold its own; and here, as among the Italian towns, arose by degrees an individualism of the old Greek and Roman stamp,