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637 their goods, under the safeguard of the church. Cities and towns hence arose, as in ancient times from the asylums, which Livy calls "vetus urbes condentium consilium." As there was no language which the conquerors and the conquered could, employ in common, and the use of the vulgar characters was scarcely known, men returned to hieroglyphics in emblems, armorial bearings, &c. To this divine or theocratic age, succeeded the heroic, that is, the feudal age. The vassalli rustici (tenants in villenage ?) whose service was at first personal, answer to the clients at Rome from the time of Romulus to that of Servius Tullius. To these succeeded vassals holding real fiefs by payments (reali pesi) answering to the condition of the plebeians after Servius had granted them the dominum bonitarium of their lands, on paying the census to the treasury. These plebeians, called nexi till the passing of the Petilian law, answered to the liegemen (homines ligati) of the feudal age. Allodial tenure corresponds to the holding ex jure optimo in the Roman law. Conquered kings in the Roman times were nearly in the condition of those who held sovereign fiefs in the middle ages. In the assem- blies of armed knights and barons, we see the Quirites of ancient Rome, who alone enjoyed legislative rights, and de- rived their name from their weapon (quiris a spear). As the patricians in Rome kept the knowledge of law to themselves, and lost their power when this knowledge became diffused among the people, so the revival of the study of law in modern Europe was the downfall of the feudal aristocracy. As the Roman government was first aristocratic, then popular, then monarchical, so have been the governments of Europe. The latter two forms are both adapted to a civilized people, and may be exchanged one for the other, but there can be no return to aristocracy. When the plebeians have once asserted their own equality with the nobles, they will not resign it, but they may enjoy this equality in a popular government or in a monarchy. Hence aristocratic governments have almost disappeared, and those which survive, as Venice, Lucca, Genoa, Nuremberg, have an anxious and precarious existence. Such, according to the Scienza Nuova, is the eternal circle in which history revolves, under the guidance of Providence,, which thus secures the government of states to the best,