it is easier to estimate the work of Ecgbert, Edward the Elder, and Aethelstan than the more many-sided achievements of Alfred and Dunstan, or the more pervasive influence of the great Northern school which gave us Bede and Alcuin. But the peculiarity of England’s position is most significant for constitutional growths, and it is, therefore, in connexion with English affairs that the origins of Feudalism are best investigated and discussed. Scientific history begins with the observation of resemblances and with classification by likeness. Then it passes on to detect differences, and to note their significance. Nowhere is there more need to remember these twin methods than in the study of Feudalism, where the Cambridge scholar Maitland was our daring and yet cautious guide. Processes and details which we notice in English history have their parallels elsewhere. If the centuries we traverse here have a large common inheritance, they also have at the same time, in spite of differences in place and character, something of a common history. What is said, therefore, as to the origins of English Feudalism also applies, with due allowance for great local differences, to Germany, France, and Italy; even indeed to Spain, although there the presence and the conquests of the Muslims impressed a peculiar stamp upon its institutions.
The period with which we have to deal is more than most periods what is sometimes called transitional; but this only means that it is more difficult than other periods to treat by itself. History is always changing and transitional, but keeps its own continuity even when we find it hard to discern. Breaches of continuity are rare, although in this period we have two of them: one, the establishment of the Moors in Spain, and the other, more widely diffused and less restricted locally, the inroads of the Northmen ending in the establishment of the Normans, whose conquest of England, as the beginning of a new era, is kept for a later volume. In many other periods some histories of states or institutions cease to be significant or else come to an end. Of this particular age we can say that it is specially and peculiarly one of beginnings, one in which older institutions and older forms of thought are gradually passing into later stages, which sometimes seem to be altogether new. The true significance, therefore, of the age can only be seen when we look ahead, and bear in mind the outlines of what in coming volumes must be traced in detail. This is specially true of the Feudalism which was everywhere gradually growing up, and, therefore, to understand its growth it is well to look ahead and picture for ourselves the system which forms the background for later history, although even here it is in process of growth and its economic and military causes are at work.
The dissolution of the Carolingian Empire ends its first stage with
