We have
here, it will be seen, no ordinary legislator and no ordinary laws: we
see the work, with infinite variations and in disconnected form, of a
prodigiously energetic and watchful master, who had to think and provide
for everything, who had to be everywhere the moving and the regulating
spirit. This universal and untiring energy is the grand characteristic
of Charlemagne's government, and was, perhaps, what made his superiority
most incontestable and his power most efficient.
It is noticeable that the majority of Charlemagne's Capitularies belong
to that epoch of his reign when he was Emperor of the West, when he was
invested with all the splendor of sovereign power. Of the 65
Capitularies classed under different heads, 13 only are previous to the
25th of December, 800, the date of his coronation as Emperor at Rome; 52
are comprised between the years 801 and 804.
The energy of Charlemagne as a warrior and a politician having thus been
exhibited, it remains to say a few words about his intellectual energy.
For that is by no means the least original or least grand feature of his
character and his influence.
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