[ 504 ] [MAY, 



THE H&NSE TOWNS. 



THE greater part of the life of Charlemagne had been spent in efforts 

 to subdue the north ; and, with the usual effect of the mere war of am- 

 bition, he found that his labours and even his triumphs ended in at once 

 exhausting his own force, and increasing the force of his enemy. The 

 vigour and activity necessary for resistance to a monarch and warrior 

 who carried the whole south and west of Europe in his train, rapidly 

 brought out the latent powers of the barbarous tribes ; and partially 

 broken as the nations round the Baltic were by this incessant war, they 

 had acquired habits of industry, self-dependence, and political union, 

 which, at the death of Charlemagne, placed them in a position to become 

 conquerors in their turn. 



The vices and follies which finally broke down the empire of Charlemagne, 

 relievefl the north of the only rival which it had to dread ; and the nature 

 of the country watered by large rivers, indented by bays, and, above 

 all, containing in its bosom the Baltic turned the popular attention to 

 commerce: But a still more powerful influence civilized the people. 

 Charlemagne had planted Christianity among them ; and rude as was 

 the Christianity of Charlemagne, and suspicious as all religion must be 

 when planted by the sword, its better spirit gradually made way among 

 their institutions. Its first result was in reconciling those half-savage 

 tribes to each other. The missionary passing through the camps of the 

 wild sons of violence and plunder, offered to them the sight of a being 

 whose principles and life were regulated on grounds totally distinct from 

 their own, and who forced their respect without the hazardous and san- 

 guinary distinctions of war. Where the monastery rose among them, 

 they saw a building nobler than any of their castles, tenanted with a 

 crowd of men, living together in quiet ; opulent by their superior intel- 

 ligence and industry ; surrounded by lands whose cultivation and beauty 

 shamed the neglected and barren state of their own ; masters of a rank 

 of knowledge to w T hich the barbarian, in all ages, bows down, if not with 

 superstitious fear, with wonder and reverence ; and this whole splendid 

 community sustained by a declared adherence to the precepts of peace. 

 The worship of the sword was thus rapidly approaching its close. Men 

 discovered that all the best advantages of life might be not merely more 

 rapidly obtained, but more fully enjoyed and more securely held, by 

 abandoning the old career of fury and rapine ; and from that hour the 

 spell of barbarism was broken. The peasantry nocked round the walls 

 of the convent, where they received not only spiritual wisdom, but 

 assistance in their difficulties, medicine, food, and clothing, education in 

 their ignorance, and not unfrequently protection against the outrages of 

 their lords. They next built a village round the monastery. The village 

 grew to a town ; its opulence, or the funds of the monastery, purchased 

 the right of self-government from the feudal sovereign ; and a little 

 republic was thus formed, guided by a wisdom which was not to be 

 found in the councils of idle and brute barons ; and urged on to opu- 

 lence by that resistless animation and judgment, invariably belonging to 

 a state of a society where every man is free to follow the bent of his own 

 genius, and every man is secure in the fruits of his labour. 



Before the end of the thirteenth century; Europe was studded with 

 those privileged cities. They were to be found along the shores of every 

 sea, on the banks of every great river, in every spot where the productive 



