This was usually called commendation,, and appears to have been founded on two very general principles, both of which the distracted state of society inculcated. The weak needed the protection of the powerful; and the government needed some security for public order. Even before the invasion of the Franks, Salvian, a writer of the 5th century, mentions the cus-tom of obtaining the protection of the great by money, and blames their rapacity, though he allows the natural reasonableness of the practice. The disadvantageous condition of the less powerful freemen, which ended in the servitude of one part and in the feudal vassalage of another, led such as fortunately still preserved their allodial property to insure its defence by a stipulated payment of money. Such payments may be traced in extant charters, chiefly indeed of monasteries. In the case of private persons, it may be presumed that this voluntary contract was frequently changed by the stronger party into a perfect feudal dependence. From this, however, as I imagine, it probably differed, in being capable of dissolution at the inferior's pleasure, without incurring a forfeiture, as well as having no relation to land. Homage, however, seems to have been incident to commendation, as well as to vassalage.

Military service was sometimes the condition of this engagement. It was the law of France, so late at least as the commencement of the third race of kings, that no man could take a part in private wars except in defence of his own lord. Indeed, there is reason to infer from the capitularies of Charles the Bald that every man was bound to attach himself to some lord, though it was the privilege of a freeman to choose his own superior. And this is strongly supported by the analogy of our Anglo-Saxon laws, where it is frequently repeated that no man should continue without a lord."-By the edict of Milan, issued by Conrad II., emperor of Germany, in 1037, four regulations are established: "that no man should be deprived of his fief, whether held of the emperor or a mesne lord, but by the laws of the empire and the judgment of his peers; that from such judgment an immediate vassal might appeal to his sovereign; that fiefs should be inherited by sons and their children, or on their failure by brothers, provided they were feuda paterna, such as had descended from the father; and that the lord should not alienate the lief of his vassal without his consent." This edict, though relating immediately only to Lorn-bardv, is thought to mark the full maturity of the feudal system, and the last stage of its progress.

Its object was to put an end to disagreements between inferior vassals and then-immediate lords, which had been caused by the want of settled usage. Guizot is of opinion that the essential facts of the feudal system may be reduced to three, viz.: 1, the particular nature of territorial property, real, full, hereditary, and yet derived from a superior, imposing certain personal obligations on its possessor, under pain of forfeiture; in a word, wanting in that complete independence which is now its characteristic; 2, the amalgamation of sovereignty with property, the attribution to the proprietor of the soil, over all the inhabitants of that soil, of the whole or nearly the whole of those rights which constitute what we call sovereignty, and which are now possessed only by government, the public power; 3, the hierarchal system of legislative, judicial, and military institutions, which united the possessors of fiefs among themselves, and formed them into a general society. Of feudal rela-tions. support and fidelity were the principal. The vassal owed service to his lord, and the lord protection to his vassal. If the vassal failed in his obligation, his land was forfeited; if the lord failed, he lost his seigniory.

It is disputed whether the vassal was bound to follow his lord's standard against his own kindred. As respected the king, the relations were loose and shifting. There are instances of vassals aiding their immediate superiors against the king; and the royal power was always in antagonism to the feudal system.-The ceremonies which took place when a fief was con-ferred were principally homage, fealty, and in vestiture. The first expressed the submission and devotedness of the vassal toward his lord. The oath of fealty differed little in language from the act of homage, but was indispensable, was taken by ecclesiastics, but not by minors, and could be received by proxy. Investiture was the actual conveyance of feudal lands, and was proper or improper. By the first, the vassal was put in possession upon the ground, by the lord or his deputy, which the English law calls livery of seisin; by the second, possession was given symbolically, by the delivery of a branch, turf, or stone, or some other natural object, according to custom. Nearly a hundred varieties of investiture are mentioned. The vassal's duties commenced with his investiture. These were very numerous, and it is impossible to define them at large.

They embraced nearly every obligation that can exist in such a state of society as then prevailed over most of Christendom. They varied, too, with place and time. Military service depended upon circumstances, though 40 days was the usual term that the tenant of a knight's fee was bound to be in the field at his own expense. Among the feudal incidents advantageous to the lord were reliefs, fines upon alienation, escheats, aid, wardship, and marriage, the two latter placing the wards and orphan minors among his vassals almost entirely at his mercy. The control of female vassals with respect to marriage was carried to its utmost extent in the Latin kingdom of. Jerusalem, founded by the first crusaders at the time when the feudal system was at its height. Improper fiefs, as they were called to distinguish them from the military fiefs, were in time granted, in order to gratify pride or to raise money. They were granted for a price, and without reference to military service. The language of the feudal law was applied by a kind of metaphor to almost every transfer of property.

Hence, pensions of money and allowances of provisions, however remote from right notions of a fief, were sometimes granted under that name; and even where land was the subject of the donation, its conditions were often lucrative, often honorary, and sometimes ludicrous." Fiefs of office, too, were granted, by which persons received grants of land on condition of performing some domestic service to the lord. The mechanic arts were carried on in the houses of the great by persons receiving lands upon these conditions.-The feudal system was exclusive in its spirit. In strictness, a person not noble by birth could not possess a fief, though there were occasional exceptions to this rule, which increased as the aris-tocratical spirit declined. Three descents were necessary to remove fully the stain of ignoble blood. Children born of an ignoble mother, in lawful wedloek, were looked upon as of illegitimate origin. The higher clergy, as prelates and abbots, were feudal nobles. Ecclesiastical tenants came within the scope of feudal duty. Below the gentle classes were the freemen and the serfs.

The former were dwellers in chartered towns, and were destined to have an important part in destroying the feudal system; and in England, the yeomanry, to whose existence that country owed its leading place in the military system of Europe, were also among the freemen. The serfs, or villeins, were among the most abject of mankind, and were despised and maltreated because they had been degraded and injured. In some countries a distinction was made between villeins and serfs, the latter being compelled to perform the vilest labors, and thoroughly enslaved, while the condition of the former was not so harsh, their payments and duties being defined. Probably at no time in the world's history have the mass of the people been so badly treated as during the existence of the feudal system; and many of those customs and opinions that still impede the growth of the people in knowledge and happiness in several countries, are but relics of that system, and yet continue to do its work.-There were several causes for the decline of feudalism.

The two extremes of society were alike interested in its destruction, and continually sought it: the king, feebly grasping a sceptre that was scarcely more than a fool's bauble; and the squalid people, who were treated by the ruling classes with less consideration than they bestowed upon beasts of chase. The growth of the institution of chivalry, which was one of the children of feudalism, was inju-. rious to the system whence it sprung. The feudal system had much to do with the crusades, and it was probably the only state of society in which those expeditions could either have been undertaken, or have been renewed from time to time during nearly 200 years; yet they worked most injuriously to it, and helped to prepare the way for its fall. The growth of the towns, the increase of commerce, the development of the commercial spirit, the acquisition of military knowledge by the people in several countries, scientific inventions and discoveries, and the application of gunpowder to the uses of war, aided its downfall. In France it failed utterly as a bulwark against the English invasions of the 14th century, which rapidly accelerated its fate.

It might have remained powerful during the first century of the Valois kings had it not proved totally unequal to the business it claimed as peculiarly its own, that of defending the soil its members owned, and the country they governed.-See Sismondi, His-toire des francais and Histoire des republiques italiennes; Guizot, Histoire generate de la civilisation en France and Histoire generate de la civilisation, en Europe; Michelet, Histoire de France; Hallam, "Europe during the Middle Ages;" Bell,Historical Studies of Feudalism (London, 1852); and Lacroix, Manners, Customs, and Dress during the Middle Ages, and during the Renaissance Period (translated from the French, London, 1874).