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Excerpt from Western Europe in the Fifth Century: An Aftermath When the late Mr. E. A. Freeman set forth on his last visit to Spain his immediate interest was the completion of his History of Sicily. It was known, however, by his friends that he had left behind in an unfinished state the materials for a volume on Western Europe in the Fifth Century. Like many other historical students he was much interested in the few historical notices that have survived concerning the events in Britain during the fifth century. He desired to understand them, and as far as possible to fit them in with what we know of the general political development of Western Europe, and he felt that the only way of approaching this subject with any chance of permanent success was to make sure of the events that had happened in Gaul. If we understood clearly what had occurred there we were at least in possession of information which would keep us from Wrong ideas as to what might have happened in insular Britain. The incidents that are recorded are so brief and isolated that, taken by themselves, they fail to give us any idea of what was going on, but when we look at them in the light created by events in Gaul we perceive faint traces of a connexion between them; it is the fading influence of the magic name, res publica Romana, and the efforts that were being made, secular and religious, to revive it for the salvation of the island. It was then for this purpose that he had given as professor two or three courses of lectures on this subject, and it is evident from such. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a b