testimony on Diets, sessions of the high court, and other political and juridical events from the memoirs concerning the high court of Moravia and letters of Charles the elder of Zerotin1, and from memoirs, as of William of Slavata 2. This literature belongs principally to the last ten years of the sixteenth century, and to the first years of the seventeenth century. That was a very stormy time; the struggles arose principally in the Diets; therefore letters and memoirs sometimes threw a keen light on political parties and their aims. All this excitement suddenly stopped after 1620. Much more than half of the inhabitants were obliged to leave the kingdom after the catastrophe ; three-quarters of the landed property was confiscated. Ferdinand II wished to justify himself in the eyes of Europe for these terrible prosecutions, and confided this to Goldast, a very learned German lawyer, whose Commentaries on the Bohemian public law appeared in 1627. As Goldast did not hesitate even to falsify public acts in order to prove his case, Paul Stranskij published his Bohemian State in 1634; it is a true description of the political relations of the Bohemian kingdom in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Although the literary movement was vivid enough 1 The works of Charles the elder of Zerotin (Spisy Karla Starsího z Zerotína) are published by V. Brandl in Brunn between the years 1866-72 in two parts, one including his memoirs on the high court of Moravia (Zerotínoví zápisové o soude panském, 2 vols., 1866), another his Bohemian letters (Listové psaní jazykem ceskym, 3 vols., 1870, 1871, 1872). " The memoirs of William of Slavata on the high court of Bohemia (Zápisky Viléma Slavaty z let 1601-1603) are published by Rezek in 1887 in the editions of the Bohemian Scientific Society (Rozpravy Kr. Ceské Spolecnosti Náuk). in 1627 and the succeeding years until the consequences of these awful events disclosed themselves in their full strength, this literature after 1627 is almost foreign to the Slavonic law, so that Stranskij's book may be called the last cry of despair of a downtrodden nation. THE LECTURE IV POLAND HE Slavonic tribes, which formed the Polish kingdom, were scattered through vast territories without marked frontiers; they were as if lost between forests and swamps, and cut off by other semi-heathen Slavs from nations more cultivated. Therefore they entered on the historical scene only at the end of the tenth century, and the process of the appropriation of the new mediaeval doctrines lasted a long time. The Roman Catholic Church took the largest part in their development, which engraved a distinct stamp on all their future political and social life. The coalescence of different tribes into one state and one nationality under the guidance of the clergy, and the struggles between the old heathen ideas and the new ones, continued until the end of the thirteenth century. The foreign, principally German, colonization was first brought about by the clergy at the end of the twelfth century, but assumed its largest dimensions from the Mongolian invasion about the middle of the thirteenth century. Poland, principally by the influence of the clergy and partly on account of foreign colonization, became from the fourteenth century very like other Roman Catholic countries. The two centuries, the fourteenth and fifteenth, present Poland as a mediaeval state with the same tendencies of mind, constitutional and social structure as in Western Europe. But from the beginning of the fourteenth century the rising of the town-inhabitants in order to turn Poland into a province of the German Empire, and their German nationality, which they preserved very carefully, alienated from the citizens the nobility and even the peasants. So the cities were excluded from political life, and formed, as it were, distinct bodies in the Polish polity; they could not therefore counterbalance the nobility or support the kingly power. As even their economical strength was undermined by the great changes of universal trade on account of the maritime discoveries of the fifteenth century, the importance of the towns began to disappear from the second half of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile the Polish mind was educated by the clergy to a sense not favourable to a strong civil authority which could restrain the chivalry, and so the nobility obtained more and more privileges. From the middle of the fifteenth century it considered itself as the nation. The frequent meetings of the nobility in the fifteenth century, and the appearance of the Diet at the end of that century consolidated government by them. The revival of Latin and Greek studies must have had an enormous influence on the nobility, which became more and more wealthy after the fall of the state of the Teutonic knights in consequence of the opening for trade of the Vistula. This nobility was greatly attracted by the grand pictures of political life of ancient peoples. The Roman king, elected by a nation of landowners and at the same time warriors, fascinated the imagination of the Polish nobility, which decided to re-establish this ideal. Thus the history of Polish polity from the sixteenth century becomes very valuable to a history of law, because it is almost the only example in the history of mankind, where a very large society was as if hypnotized by fancy for some centuries, notwithstanding the real conditions of life, which urgently required reforms and finally conduced to the fall of the state. Thus we find in the Polish development of private and public law1 the same threefold division, which we 1 The Polish history of law, principally the history of the public law, drew the attention of the native and even foreign investigators from the sixteenth century; but these writers generally looked on the past events from the point of view of their time, and wished to give a large picture of the whole past from the beginning to the day of their writings. Besides, as the political history of Poland was very stormy, the authors could not look upon the events with a necessary calmness and impartiality. This state of things evoked a reaction about the middle of the last century, and from that time we find an uninterrupted series of initial editions of all sorts of documents and very important monographs, but we have not a general sketch of the whole history of law, in which all the dispersed investigators were turned to account. Partially it can be said only of the history of Poland by Prof. Bobrzynski (Dzieje Polski w zarysie, Krakow, 2 vols., 1887, 1890), which describes the development of the Polish state and the Polish society. The expositions of the private law, made by Dutkievitch and by Burzynski cannot be recommended, as not scientific enough. The history of the private law, however, could not even be written; as every palatinate lived after its own customs, a scientific description of the development of the private law ought to be based on such investigations, very difficult to make. The multitude of very valuable monographs renders a good bibliography particularly useful. Such a bibliography, collected and brought into order by Dr. Finkel, appears from the year 1891 and is yet far from the end (Bibliografia historyi polskicj, 1891-1900). Another help can be found in the Quarterly Historical Review,' published from the year 1887 by the Historical |