OF MODERN CORPORATIONS. on 
commonly supposed, and that even revolutions 
leave most things unchanged. The historian, 
as well as the natural philosopher, must sup- 
pose at some time or other an absolute beginning, 
a creation out of nothing, but what each can 
trace, and what forms the science of each is a 
series of changes, in which the older condition 
of things always furnishes the material for the 
newer. 
The identity of the Roman with the modern 
municipal institutions was little more than a 
presumption and a conjecture, until the appear- 
ance of the researches of Savigny, the eloquent 
juristical professor of Berlin. His name must 
be familiar to every reader of Niebuhr’s history, 
in which it occurs repeatedly, and never with- 
out some expression of affection and veneration. 
These eminent men appear to have lived in the 
most unrestrained communication of their 
thoughts, and as Savigny suggested to Niebuhr 
many explanations of his difficulties, he derived 
from him the hint, which led him to trace the 
continuance of the municipal institutions of the 
empire among the barbarians. This subject 
occupies the principal part of the first volume 
of his Geschichte des Romischen Recht im Mittel- 
alter, (History of the Roman Law in the Middle 
