PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.i HE object of this treatise is not so much to give anarrative history of the countries included in the RomanoGermanic Empire—Italy during the middle ages, Ger- many from the ninth century to the nineteenth—as to describe the Holy Empire itself as an institution orsystem, the wonderful offspring of a body of beliefs andtraditions which have almost wholly passed away fromthe world. Such a description, however, would not beintelligible without some account of the great events which accompanied the growth and decay of imperialpower; and it has therefore appeared best to give the book the form rather of a narrative than of a disserta- tion ; and to combine with an exposition of what may becalled the theory of the Empire an outline of the politicalhistory of Germany, as well as some notices of the affairs of mediaeval Italy. To make the succession of eventsclearer, a Chronological List of Emperors and Popes has been prefixed.The present edition has been carefully revised andcorrected throughout ; and a good many additions havebeen made to both text and notes.Lincoln's Inn, August II, 1870. The author has in preparation, and hopes before long to complete and publish, a set of chronological tables which maybe made to serve as a sort of skeleton history of mediaeval Germany