The substitutions fidei-commissaires of the modern civil law is a feudal idea grafted on the Roman jurisprudence, and bears scarcely any resemblance to the ancient fidei-commissa, (Institutions du Droit Francois, tom. i. p. 347 - 383. Denissart, Decisions de Jurisprudence, tom. iv. p. 577 - 604.) They were stretched to the fourth degree by an abuse of the clixth Novel; a partial, perplexed, declamatory law.