force, with its standing army furnished by the monastic orders of which the world was the parish, was too strong. In default, then, of a civil empire fit to cope with the ecclesiastical, the civilians of Europe began to create bodies which might be competent some day to hold up their heads against this overwhelming ecclesiasticism. So a whole cluster of novel organisations began to appear on the horizon like a group of Ionian or Balearic islands descried far out to sea. Some were insignificant as yet, like Austria, or full of energy, like France; some were monarchical, such as Castile, or republican, such as Florence; some Slavonic, such as Poland, or romance, such as Aragon, or teutonic such as Holland; some dependent on the decaying Empire, like the Forest Cantons, or only nominally dependent, like Bohemia; some dying, like the Arelate, or progressive like Brandenburg, or precarious like Hungary. What a bewildering scene! What a pilgrim's progress of nations setting out on the mission of humanity! or, perhaps, what a plundering and lawless caravan!
The third stage of freedom has been in modern times. The idea of mediævalism was to put the Church above the State: the idea of the succeeding epoch was to put the State above the Church. This modern idea, like the mediæval, has been fruitful of absolutism. Those who have opposed it, and have regulated the frontier between what is national and what is spiritual, have procured liberty.
