The low lands, on the other hand, announced a striking commencement of improvement and prosperity.  The marshes and fens, which had arrested and repulsed the progress of imperial Rome, had disappeared in every part of the interior.  The Meuse and the Scheldt no longer joined at their outlets, to desolate the neighboring lands; whether this change was produced by the labors of man, or merely by the accumulation of sand deposited by either stream and forming barriers to both.  The towns of Courtraig, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Berg-op-Zoom, and Thiel, had already a flourishing trade.  The last-mentioned town contained in the following century fifty-five churches; a fact from which, in the absence of other evidence, the extent of the population may be conjectured.  The formation of dikes for the protection of lands formerly submerged was already well understood, and regulated by uniform custom.  The plains thus reconquered from the waters were distributed in portions, according to their labor, by those who reclaimed them, except the parts reserved for the chieftain, the church, and the poor.  This vital necessity for the construction of dikes had given to the Frison and Flemish population a particular habit of union, goodwill, and reciprocal justice, because it was necessary to make common cause in this great work for their mutual preservation.  In all other points, the detail of the laws and manners of this united people presents a picture similar to that of the Saxons of England, with the sole exception that the people of the Netherlands were milder than the Saxon race properly so called—­their long habit of laborious industry exercising its happy influence on the martial spirit original to both.  The manufacturing arts were also somewhat more advanced in this part of the continent than in Great Britain.  The Frisons, for example, were the only people who could succeed in making the costly mantles in use among the wealthy Franks.

The government of Charlemagne admitted but one form, borrowed from that of the empire in the period of its decline—­a mixture of the spiritual and temporal powers, exercised in the first place by the emperor, and at second-hand by the counts and bishops.  The counts in those times were not the heads of noble families, as they afterward became, but officers of the government, removable at will, and possessing no hereditary rights.  Their incomes did not arise from salaries paid in money, but consisted of lands, of which they had the revenues during the continuance of their authority.  These lands being situated in the limits of their administration, each regarded them as his property only for the time being, and considered himself as a tenant at will.  How unfavorable such a system was to culture and improvement may be well imagined.  The force of possession was, however, frequently opposed to the seigniorial rights of the crown; and thus, though all civil dignity and the revenues attached to it were but personal