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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Roman and the Teuton, by Charles
+Kingsley, Edited by F. Max Muller
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Roman and the Teuton
+       A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge
+
+
+Author: Charles Kingsley
+
+Editor: F. Max Muller
+
+Release Date: October 4, 2007  [eBook #3821]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1889 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON
+
+
+A SERIES OF LECTURES
+
+DELIVERED BEFORE
+
+_THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE_
+
+BY
+CHARLES KINGSLEY, M.A.
+
+_NEW EDITION_, _WITH PREFACE_, _BY_
+PROFESSOR F. MAX MULLER
+
+London
+MACMILLAN AND CO.
+1889
+
+[_All rights reserved_]
+
+OXFORD:
+HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY.
+
+DEDICATED
+TO
+The Gentlemen of the University
+WHO DID ME THE HONOUR
+TO ATTEND THESE LECTURES.
+
+Contents
+
+Preface by Professor F.  Max Muller
+   The Forest Children
+   The Dying Empire
+   Preface to Lecture III
+   The Human Deluge
+   The Gothic Civilizer
+   Dietrich's End
+   The Nemesis of the Goths
+   Paulus Diaconus
+   The Clergy and the Heathen
+   The Monk a Civilizer
+   The Lombard Laws
+   The Popes and the Lombards
+   The Strategy of Prividence
+   Appendix--Inaugural Lecture: The Limits of Exact Science as Applied to
+History
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Never shall I forget the moment when for the last time I gazed upon the
+manly features of Charles Kingsley, features which Death had rendered
+calm, grand, sublime.  The constant struggle that in life seemed to allow
+no rest to his expression, the spirit, like a caged lion, shaking the
+bars of his prison, the mind striving for utterance, the soul wearying
+for loving response,--all that was over.  There remained only the
+satisfied expression of triumph and peace, as of a soldier who had fought
+a good fight, and who, while sinking into the stillness of the slumber of
+death, listens to the distant sounds of music and to the shouts of
+victory.  One saw the ideal man, as Nature had meant him to be, and one
+felt that there is no greater sculptor than Death.
+
+As one looked on that marble statue which only some weeks ago had so
+warmly pressed one's hand, his whole life flashed through one's thoughts.
+One remembered the young curate and the Saint's Tragedy; the chartist
+parson and Alton Locke; the happy poet and the Sands of Dee; the
+brilliant novel-writer and Hypatia and Westward-Ho; the Rector of
+Eversley and his Village Sermons; the beloved professor at Cambridge, the
+busy canon at Chester, the powerful preacher in Westminster Abbey.  One
+thought of him by the Berkshire chalk-streams and on the Devonshire
+coast, watching the beauty and wisdom of Nature, reading her solemn
+lessons, chuckling too over her inimitable fun.  One saw him in
+town-alleys, preaching the Gospel of godliness and cleanliness, while
+smoking his pipe with soldiers and navvies.  One heard him in drawing-
+rooms, listened to with patient silence, till one of his vigorous or
+quaint speeches bounded forth, never to be forgotten.  How children
+delighted in him!  How young, wild men believed in him, and obeyed him
+too!  How women were captivated by his chivalry, older men by his genuine
+humility and sympathy!
+
+All that was now passing away--was gone.  But as one looked on him for
+the last time on earth, one felt that greater than the curate, the poet,
+the professor, the canon, had been the man himself, with his warm heart,
+his honest purposes, his trust in his friends, his readiness to spend
+himself, his chivalry and humility, worthy of a better age.
+
+Of all this the world knew little;--yet few men excited wider and
+stronger sympathies.
+
+Who can forget that funeral on the 28th Jan., 1875, and the large sad
+throng that gathered round his grave?  There was the representative of
+the Prince of Wales, and close by the gipsies of the Eversley common, who
+used to call him their Patrico-rai, their Priest-King.  There was the old
+Squire of his village, and the labourers, young and old, to whom he had
+been a friend and a father.  There were Governors of distant Colonies,
+officers, and sailors, the Bishop of his diocese, and the Dean of his
+abbey; there were the leading Nonconformists of the neighbourhood, and
+his own devoted curates, Peers and Members of the House of Commons,
+authors and publishers; and outside the church-yard, the horses and the
+hounds and the huntsman in pink, for though as good a clergyman as any,
+Charles Kingsley had been a good sportsman too, and had taken in his life
+many a fence as bravely as he took the last fence of all, without fear or
+trembling.  All that he had loved, and all that had loved him was there,
+and few eyes were dry when he was laid in his own yellow gravel bed, the
+old trees which he had planted and cared for waving their branches to him
+for the last time, and the grey sunny sky looking down with calm pity on
+the deserted rectory, and on the short joys and the shorter sufferings of
+mortal men.
+
+All went home feeling that life was poorer, and every one knew that he
+had lost a friend who had been, in some peculiar sense, his own.  Charles
+Kingsley will be missed in England, in the English colonies, in America,
+where he spent his last happy year; aye, wherever Saxon speech and Saxon
+thought is understood.  He will be mourned for, yearned for, in every
+place in which he passed some days of his busy life.  As to myself, I
+feel as if another cable had snapped that tied me to this hospitable
+shore.
+
+When an author or a poet dies, the better part of him, it is often said,
+is left in his works.  So it is in many cases.  But with Kingsley his
+life and his works were one.  All he wrote was meant for the day when he
+wrote it.  That was enough for him.  He hardly gave himself time to think
+of fame and the future.  Compared with a good work done, with a good word
+spoken, with a silent grasp of the hand from a young man he had saved
+from mischief, or with a 'Thank you, Sir,' from a poor woman to whom he
+had been a comfort, he would have despised what people call glory, like
+incense curling away in smoke.  He was, in one sense of the word, a
+careless writer.  He did his best at the time and for the time.  He did
+it with a concentrated energy of will which broke through all
+difficulties.  In his flights of imagination, in the light and fire of
+his language he had few equals, if any; but the perfection and classical
+finish which can be obtained by a sustained effort only, and by a
+patience which shrinks from no drudgery, these are wanting in most of his
+works.
+
+However, fame, for which he cared so little, has come to him.  His bust
+will stand in Westminster Abbey, in the Chapel of St. John the Baptist,
+by the side of his friend, Frederick Maurice; and in the Temple of Fame
+which will be consecrated to the period of Victoria and Albert, there
+will be a niche for Charles Kingsley, the author of Alton Locke and
+Hypatia.
+
+Sooner or later a complete edition of his works will be wanted, though we
+may doubt whether he himself would have wished all his literary works to
+be preserved.  From what I knew of him and his marvellous modesty, I
+should say decidedly not.  I doubt more especially, whether he would have
+wished the present book, _The Roman and the Teuton_, to be handed down to
+posterity.  None of his books was so severely criticised as this volume
+of Lectures, delivered before the University of Cambridge, and published
+in 1864.  He himself did not republish it, and it seems impossible to
+speak in more depreciatory terms of his own historical studies than he
+does himself again and again in the course of his lectures.  Yet these
+lectures, it should be remembered, were more largely attended than almost
+any other lectures at Cambridge.  They produced a permanent impression on
+many a young mind.  They are asked for again and again, and when the
+publishers wished for my advice as to the expediency of bringing out a
+new and cheaper edition, I could not hesitate as to what answer to give.
+
+I am not so blinded by my friendship for Kingsley as to say that these
+lectures are throughout what academical lectures ought to be.  I only
+wish some one would tell me what academical lectures at Oxford and
+Cambridge can be, as long as the present system of teaching and examining
+is maintained.  It is easy to say what these lectures are not.  They do
+not profess to contain the results of long continued original research.
+They are not based on a critical appreciation of the authorities which
+had to be consulted.  They are not well arranged, systematic or complete.
+All this the suddenly elected professor of history at Cambridge would
+have been the first to grant.  'I am not here,' he says, 'to teach you
+history.  I am here to teach you how to teach yourselves history.'  I
+must say even more.  It seems to me that these lectures were not always
+written in a perfectly impartial and judicial spirit, and that
+occasionally they are unjust to the historians who, from no other motive
+but a sincere regard for truth, thought it their duty to withhold their
+assent from many of the commonly received statements of mediaeval
+chroniclers.
+
+But for all that, let us see what these Lectures are, and whether there
+is not room for them by the side of other works.  First of all, according
+to the unanimous testimony of those who heard them delivered at
+Cambridge, they stirred up the interest of young men, and made them ask
+for books which Undergraduates had never asked for before at the
+University libraries.  They made many people who read them afterwards,
+take a new interest in old and half-forgotten kings and battles, and they
+extorted even from unfriendly critics the admission that certain
+chapters, such as, for instance, 'The Monk as a Civiliser,' displayed in
+an unexpected way his power of appreciating the good points in
+characters, otherwise most antipathic to the apostle of Manly
+Christianity.  They contain, in fact, the thoughts of a poet, a moralist,
+a politician, a theologian, and, before all, of a friend and counsellor
+of young men, while reading for them and with them one of the most awful
+periods in the history of mankind, the agonies of a dying Empire and the
+birth of new nationalities.  History was but his text, his chief aim was
+that of the teacher and preacher, and as an eloquent interpreter of the
+purposes of history before an audience of young men to whom history is
+but too often a mere succession of events to be learnt by heart, and to
+be ready against periodical examinations, he achieved what he wished to
+achieve.  Historians by profession would naturally be incensed at some
+portions of this book, but even they would probably admit by this time,
+that there are in it whole chapters full of excellence, telling passages,
+happy delineations, shrewd remarks, powerful outbreaks of real eloquence,
+which could not possibly be consigned to oblivion.
+
+Nor would it have been possible to attempt to introduce any alterations,
+or to correct what may seem to be mistakes.  The book is not meant as a
+text-book or as an authority, any more than Schiller's History of the
+Thirty Years' War; it should be read in future, as what it was meant to
+be from the first, Kingsley's thoughts on some of the moral problems
+presented by the conflict between the Roman and the Teuton.  One cannot
+help wishing that, instead of lectures, Kingsley had given us another
+novel, like Hypatia, or a real historical tragedy, a Dietrich von Bern,
+embodying in living characters one of the fiercest struggles of humanity,
+the death of the Roman, the birth of the German world.  Let me quote here
+what Bunsen said of Kingsley's dramatic power many years ago:
+
+'I do not hesitate (he writes) to call these two works, the _Saint's
+Tragedy_ and _Hypatia_, by far the most important and perfect of this
+genial writer.  In these more particularly I find the justification of a
+hope which I beg to be allowed to express--that Kingsley might continue
+Shakspeare's historical plays.  I have for several years made no secret
+of it, that Kingsley seems to me the genius of our century, called to
+place by the side of that sublime dramatic series from _King John_ to
+_Henry VIII_, another series of equal rank, from _Edward VI_ to the
+_Landing of William of Orange_.  This is the only historical development
+of Europe which unites in itself all vital elements, and which we might
+look upon without overpowering pain.  The tragedy of _St. Elizabeth_
+shows that Kingsley can grapple, not only with the novel, but with the
+more severe rules of dramatic art.  And _Hypatia_ proves, on the largest
+scale, that he can discover in the picture of the historical past, the
+truly human, the deep, the permanent, and that he knows how to represent
+it.  How, with all this, he can hit the fresh tone of popular life, and
+draw humourous characters and complications with Shakspearian energy, is
+proved by all his works.  And why should he not undertake this great
+task?  There is a time when the true poet, the prophet of the present,
+must bid farewell to the questions of the day, which seem so great
+because they are so near, but are, in truth, but small and unpoetical.  He
+must say to himself, "Let the dead bury their dead"--and the time has
+come that Kingsley should do so.'
+
+A great deal has been written on mistakes which Kingsley was supposed to
+have made in these Lectures, but I doubt whether these criticisms were
+always perfectly judicial and fair.  For instance, Kingsley's using the
+name of Dietrich, instead of Theodoric, was represented as the very gem
+of a blunder, and some critics went so far as to hint that he had taken
+Theodoric for a Greek word, as an adjective of Theodorus.  This, of
+course, was only meant as a joke, for on page 120 Kingsley had said, in a
+note, that the name of _Theodoric_, _Theuderic_, _Dietrich_, signifies
+'king of nations.'  He therefore knew perfectly well that _Theodoric_ was
+simply a Greek adaptation of the Gothic name _Theode-reiks_, _theod_
+meaning people, _reiks_, according to Grimm, _princeps_ {1}.  But even if
+he had called the king Theodorus, the mistake would not have been
+unpardonable, for he might have appealed to the authority of Gregory of
+Tours, who uses not only Theodoricus, but also Theodorus, as the same
+name.
+
+A more serious charge, however, was brought against him for having used
+the High-German form _Dietrich_, instead of the original form
+_Theodereiks_ or _Theoderic_, or even _Theodoric_.  Should I have altered
+this?  I believe not; for it is clear to me that Kingsley had his good
+reasons for preferring Dietrich to Theodoric.
+
+He introduces him first to his hearers as 'Theodoric, known in German
+song as Dietrich of Bern.'  He had spoken before of the Visi-Gothic
+Theodoric, and of him he never speaks as Dietrich.  Then, why should he
+have adopted this High-German name for the great Theodoric, and why
+should he speak of Attila too as Etzel?
+
+One of the greatest of German historians, Johannes von Muller, does the
+same.  He always calls Theodoric, Dietrich of Bern; and though he gives
+no reasons for it, his reasons can easily be guessed.  Soon after
+Theodoric's death, the influence of the German legends on history, and of
+history on the German legends, became so great that it was impossible for
+a time to disentangle two characters, originally totally distinct, viz.
+_Thjodrekr_ of the Edda, the _Dietrich_ of the German poetry on one side,
+and the King of the Goths, _Theodoric_, on the other.  What had long been
+said and sung about Thjodrekr and Dietrich was believed to have happened
+to King Theodoric, while at the same time historical and local elements
+in the life of Theodoric, residing at Verona, were absorbed by the
+legends of Thjodrekr and Dietrich.  The names of the legendary hero and
+the historical king were probably identical, though even that is not
+quite certain {2}; but at all events, after Theodoric's death, all the
+numerous dialectic varieties of the name, whether in High or in
+Low-German, were understood by the people at large, both of the hero and
+of the king.
+
+Few names have had a larger number of alias'.  They have been carefully
+collected by Graff, Grimm, Forstemann, Pott, and others.  I here give the
+principal varieties of this name, as actually occurring in MSS., and
+arranged according to the changes of the principal consonants:--
+
+(1)  With _Th-d_: Theudoricus, Theudericus, [Greek text], Thiodiricus,
+Thiodericus, Thiodric, Thiodricus, Thiodrih, Theodoricus, Theodericus,
+Theoderic, Theodrich, Thiadric, Thiadrich, Thiedorik, Thiederic,
+Thiederik, Thiederich, Thiedorich, Thiedric, Thiedrich, Thideric,
+Thiederich, Thidrich, Thodericus, Thiaedric, Thieoderich, Thederich,
+Thedric.
+
+(2)  With _T-d_: Teudericus, Teudricus, Tiodericus, Teodoricus,
+Teodericus, Teodric, Teodrich, Tiadric, Tiedrik, Tiedrich, Tiedric,
+Tidericus, Tiderich, Tederich.
+
+(3)  With _D-d_: [Greek text], Diodericus, Deoderich, Deodrich,
+Diederich, Diderich.
+
+(4)  With _Th-t_: Thiotiricus, Thiotirih, Thiotiricus, Thiotrih,
+Theotoricus, Theotericus, Theoterih, Theotrih, Theotrich, Thiatric,
+Thieterich, Thietrih, Thietrich, Theatrih.
+
+(5)  With _T-t_: Teutrich, Teoterih, Teotrich, Teotrih, Tieterich,
+Teatrih, Tiheiterich.
+
+(6)  With _D-t_: Dioterih, Diotericus, Diotricus, Deotrich, Deotrih,
+Dieterih, Dieterich, Dietrich, Diterih, Ditricus.
+
+(7)  With _Th-th_: Theotherich, Theothirich.
+
+(8)  With _T-th_: _deest_.
+
+(9)  With _D-th_: Dietherich.
+
+It is quite true that, strictly speaking, the forms with Th-d, are Low-
+German, and those with D-t, High-German, but before we trust ourselves to
+this division for historical purposes, we must remember three facts: (1)
+that Proper Names frequently defy Grimm's Law; (2) that in High-German
+MSS. much depends on the locality in which they are written; (3) that
+High-German is not in the strict sense of the word a corruption of Low-
+German, and, at all events, not, as Grimm supposed, chronologically
+posterior to Low-German, but that the two are parallel dialects, like
+Doric and Aeolic, the Low-German being represented by the earliest
+literary documents, Gothic and Saxon, the High-German asserting its
+literary presence later, not much before the eighth century, but
+afterwards maintaining its literary and political supremacy from the time
+of Charlemagne to the present day.
+
+When Theodoric married Odeflede, the daughter of Childebert, and a sister
+of Chlodwig, I have little doubt that, at the court of Chlodwig or
+Clovis, his royal brother-in-law was spoken of in conversation as
+Dioterih, although in official documents, and in the history of Gregory
+of Tours, he appears under his classical name of Theodoricus, in
+Jornandes Theodericus.  Those who, with Grimm {3}, admit a transition of
+Low into High-German, and deny that the change of Gothic _Th_ into High-
+German _D_ took place before the sixth or seventh century, will find it
+difficult to account, in the first century, for the name of Deudorix, a
+German captive, the nephew of Melo the Sigambrian, mentioned by Strabo
+{4}.  In the oldest German poem in which the name of Dietrich occurs, the
+song of Hildebrand and Hadebrand, written down in the beginning of the
+ninth century {5}, we find both forms, the Low-German _Theotrih_, and the
+High-German _Deotrih_, used side by side.
+
+Very soon, however, when High-German became the more prevalent language
+in Germany, German historians knew both of the old legendary hero and of
+the Ost-gothic king, by one and the same name, the High-German
+_Dietrich_.
+
+If therefore Johannes von Muller spoke of Theodoric of Verona as Dietrich
+von Bern, he simply intended to carry on the historical tradition.  He
+meant to remind his readers of the popular name which they all knew, and
+to tell them,--This Dietrich with whom you are all acquainted from your
+childhood, this Dietrich of whom so much is said and sung in your
+legendary stories and poems, the famous Dietrich of Bern, this is really
+the Theoderic, the first German who ruled Italy for thirty-three years,
+more gloriously than any Roman Emperor before or after.  I see no harm in
+this, as long as it is done on purpose, and as long as the purpose which
+Johannes von Muller had in his mind, was attained.
+
+No doubt the best plan for an historian to follow is to call every man by
+the name by which he called himself.  Theodoric, we know, could not
+write, but he had a gold plate {6} made in which the first four letters
+of his name were incised, and when it was fixed on the paper, the King
+drew his pen through the intervals.  Those four letters were [Greek
+text], and though we should expect that, as a Goth, he would have spelt
+his name _Thiudereik_, yet we have no right to doubt, that the vowels
+were _eo_, and not _iu_.  But again and again historians spell proper
+names, not as they were written by the people themselves, but as they
+appear in the historical documents through which they became chiefly
+known.  We speak of Plato, because we have Roman literature between us
+and Greece.  American names are accepted in history through a Spanish,
+Indian names through an English medium.  The strictly Old High-German
+form of Carolus Magnus would be Charal, A. S. Carl; yet even in the Oaths
+of Strassburg (842) the name appears as Karlus and as Karl, and has
+remained so ever since {7}.  In the same document we find Ludher for
+Lothar, Ludhuwig and Lodhuvig for Ludovicus, the oldest form being
+Chlodowich: and who would lay down the law, which of these forms shall be
+used for historical purposes?
+
+I have little doubt that Kingsley's object in retaining the name Dietrich
+for the Ost-gothic king was much the same as Johannes von Muller's.  You
+know, he meant to say, of Dietrich of Bern, of all the wonderful things
+told of him in the Nibelunge and other German poems.  Well, that is the
+Dietrich of the German people, that is what the Germans themselves have
+made of him, by transferring to their great Gothic king some of the most
+incredible achievements of one of their oldest legendary heroes.  They
+have changed even his name, and as the children in the schools of Germany
+{8} still speak of him as their Dietrich von Bern, let him be to us too
+Dietrich, not simply the Ost-gothic Theoderic, but the German Dietrich.
+
+I confess I see no harm in that, though a few words on the strange
+mixture of legend and history might have been useful, because the case of
+Theodoric is one of the most luculent testimonies for that blending of
+fact and fancy in strictly historical times which people find it so
+difficult to believe, but which offers the key, and the only true key,
+for many of the most perplexing problems, both of history and of
+mythology.
+
+Originally nothing could be more different than the Dietrich of the old
+legend and the Dietrich of history.  The former is followed by misfortune
+through the whole of his life.  He is oppressed in his youth by his
+uncle, the famous Ermanrich {9}; he has to spend the greater part of his
+life (thirty years) in exile, and only returns to his kingdom after the
+death of his enemy.  Yet whenever he is called Dietrich of Bern, it is
+because the real Theodoric, the most successful of Gothic conquerors,
+ruled at Verona.  When his enemy was called Otacher, instead of Sibich,
+it is because the real Theodoric conquered the real Odoacer.  When the
+king, at whose court he passes his years of exile, is called Etzel, it is
+because many German heroes had really taken refuge in the camp of Attila.
+That Attila died two years before Theodoric of Verona was born, is no
+difficulty to a popular poet, nor even the still more glaring
+contradiction between the daring and ferocious character of the real
+Attila and the cowardice of his namesake Etzel, as represented in the
+poem of the Nibelunge.  Thus was legend quickened by history.
+
+On the other hand, if historians, such as Gregory I (Dial. iv. 36) {10},
+tell us that an Italian hermit had been witness in a vision to the
+damnation of Theodoric, whose soul was plunged, by the ministers of
+divine vengeance, into the volcano of Lipari, one of the flaming mouths
+of the infernal world, we may recognise in the heated imagination of the
+orthodox monk some recollection of the mysterious end of the legendary
+Dietrich {11}.  Later on, the legendary and the real hero were so firmly
+welded together that, as early as the twelfth century, chroniclers are at
+their wits' end how to reconcile facts and dates.
+
+Ekkehard, in his Chronicon Universale {12}, which ends 1126 A.D., points
+out the chronological contradiction between Jornandes, who places the
+death of Ermanrich long before Attila, and the popular story which makes
+him and Dietrich, the son of Dietmar, his contemporaries.
+
+Otto von Freising {13}, in the first half of the twelfth century,
+expresses the same perplexity when he finds that Theodoric is made a
+contemporary of Hermanricus and Attila, though it is certain that Attila
+ruled long after Hermanric, and that, after the death of Attila,
+Theodoric, when eight years old, was given by his father as a hostage to
+the emperor Leo.
+
+Gottfried von Viterbo {14}, in the second half of the twelfth century,
+expresses his difficulties in similar words.
+
+All these chroniclers who handed down the historical traditions of
+Germany were High-Germans, and thus it has happened that in Germany
+Theodoric the Great became Dietrich, as Strataburgum became Strassburg,
+or Turicum, Zurich.  Whether because English belongs to the Low German
+branch, it is less permissible to an English historian than to a German
+to adopt these High-German names, I cannot say: all I wished to point out
+was that there was a very intelligible reason why Kingsley should have
+preferred the popular and poetical name of Dietrich, even though it was
+High-German, either to his real Gothic name, Theodereik, or to its
+classical metamorphosis, Theodoricus or Theodorus.
+
+Some other mistakes, too, which have been pointed out, did not seem to me
+so serious as to justify their correction in a posthumous edition.  It
+was said, for instance, that Kingsley ought not to have called Odoacer
+and Theodoric, Kings of Italy, as they were only lieutenants of the
+Eastern Caesar.  Cassiodorus, however, tells us that Odoacer assumed the
+name of king (nomen regis Odoacer assumpsit), and though Gibbon points
+out that this may only mean that he assumed the abstract title of a king,
+without applying it to any particular nation or country, yet that great
+historian himself calls Odoacer, King of Italy, and shows how he was
+determined to abolish the useless and expensive office of vicegerent of
+the emperor.  Kingsley guesses very ingeniously, that Odoacer's assumed
+title, King of nations, may have been the Gothic _Theode-reiks_, the very
+name of Theodoric.  As to Theodoric himself, Kingsley surely knew his
+real status, for he says: 'Why did he not set himself up as Caesar of
+Rome?  Why did he always consider himself as son-in-arms, and
+quasi-vassal of the Caesar of Constantinople?'
+
+Lastly, in speaking of the extinction of the Western Empire with Romulus
+Augustulus, Kingsley again simply followed the lead of Gibbon and other
+historians; nor can it be said that the expression is not perfectly
+legitimate, however clearly modern research may have shown that the Roman
+Empire, though dead, lived.
+
+So much in defence, or at all events, in explanation, of expressions and
+statements which have been pointed out as most glaring mistakes in
+Kingsley's lectures.  I think it must be clear that in all these cases
+alterations would have been impossible.  There were other passages, where
+I should gladly have altered or struck out whole lines, particularly in
+the ethnological passages, and in the attempted etymologies of German
+proper names.  Neither the one nor the other, I believe, are Kingsley's
+own, though I have tried in vain to find out whence he could possibly
+have taken them.
+
+These, however, are minor matters which are mentioned chiefly in order to
+guard against the impression that, because I left them unchanged, I
+approved of them.  The permanent interest attaching to these lectures
+does not spring from the facts which they give.  For these, students will
+refer to Gibbon.  They will be valued chiefly for the thoughts which they
+contain, for the imagination and eloquence which they display, and last,
+not least, for the sake of the man, a man, it is true, of a warm heart
+rather than of a cold judgment, but a man whom, for that very reason,
+many admired, many loved, and many will miss, almost every day of their
+life.
+
+M. M.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE I--THE FOREST CHILDREN.
+
+
+I wish in this first lecture to give you some general conception of the
+causes which urged our Teutonic race to attack and destroy Rome.  I shall
+take for this one lecture no special text-book: but suppose you all to be
+acquainted with the Germania of Tacitus, and with the 9th Chapter of
+Gibbon.  And I shall begin, if you will allow me, by a parable, a myth, a
+saga, such as the men of whom I am going to tell you loved; and if it
+seem to any of you childish, bear in mind that what is childish need not
+therefore be shallow.  I know that it is not history.  These lectures
+will not be, in the popular sense, history at all.  But I beg you to bear
+in mind that I am not here to teach you history.  No man can do that.  I
+am here to teach you how to teach yourselves history.  I will give you
+the scaffolding as well as I can; you must build the house.
+
+Fancy to yourself a great Troll-garden, such as our forefathers dreamed
+of often fifteen hundred years ago;--a fairy palace, with a fairy garden;
+and all around the primaeval wood.  Inside the Trolls dwell, cunning and
+wicked, watching their fairy treasures, working at their magic forges,
+making and making always things rare and strange; and outside, the forest
+is full of children; such children as the world had never seen before,
+but children still: children in frankness, and purity, and
+affectionateness, and tenderness of conscience, and devout awe of the
+unseen; and children too in fancy, and silliness, and ignorance, and
+caprice, and jealousy, and quarrelsomeness, and love of excitement and
+adventure, and the mere sport of overflowing animal health.  They play
+unharmed among the forest beasts, and conquer them in their play; but the
+forest is too dull and too poor for them; and they wander to the walls of
+the Troll-garden, and wonder what is inside.  One can conceive easily for
+oneself what from that moment would begin to happen.  Some of the more
+adventurous clamber in.  Some, too, the Trolls steal and carry off into
+their palace.  Most never return: but here and there one escapes out
+again, and tells how the Trolls killed all his comrades: but tells too,
+of the wonders he has seen inside, of shoes of swiftness, and swords of
+sharpness, and caps of darkness; of charmed harps, charmed jewels, and
+above all of the charmed wine: and after all, the Trolls were very kind
+to him--see what fine clothes they have given him--and he struts about
+awhile among his companions; and then returns, and not alone.  The Trolls
+have bewitched him, as they will bewitch more.  So the fame of the Troll-
+garden spreads; and more and more steal in, boys and maidens, and tempt
+their comrades over the wall, and tell of the jewels, and the dresses,
+and the wine, the joyous maddening wine, which equals men with gods; and
+forget to tell how the Trolls have bought them, soul as well as body, and
+taught them to be vain, and lustful, and slavish; and tempted them, too
+often, to sins which have no name.
+
+But their better nature flashes out at times.  They will not be the
+slaves and brutes in human form, which the evil Trolls would have them;
+and they rebel, and escape, and tell of the horrors of that fair foul
+place.  And then arises a noble indignation, and war between the Trolls
+and the forest-children.  But still the Trolls can tempt and bribe the
+greedier or the more vain; and still the wonders inside haunt their
+minds; till it becomes a fixed idea among them all, to conquer the garden
+for themselves and bedizen themselves in the fine clothes, and drink
+their fill of the wine.  Again and again they break in: but the Trolls
+drive them out, rebuild their walls, keep off those outside by those whom
+they hold enslaved within; till the boys grow to be youths, and the
+youths men: and still the Troll-garden is not conquered, and still it
+shall be.  And the Trolls have grown old and weak, and their walls are
+crumbling away.  Perhaps they may succeed this time--perhaps next.
+
+And at last they do succeed--the fairy walls are breached, the fairy
+palace stormed--and the Trolls are crouching at their feet, and now all
+will be theirs, gold, jewels, dresses, arms, all that the Troll
+possesses--except his cunning.
+
+For as each struggles into the charmed ground, the spell of the place
+falls on him.  He drinks the wine, and it maddens him.  He fills his arms
+with precious trumpery, and another snatches it from his grasp.  Each
+envies the youth before him, each cries--Why had I not the luck to enter
+first?  And the Trolls set them against each other, and split them into
+parties, each mad with excitement, and jealousy, and wine, till, they
+scarce know how, each falls upon his fellow, and all upon those who are
+crowding in from the forest, and they fight and fight, up and down the
+palace halls, till their triumph has become a very feast of the Lapithae,
+and the Trolls look on, and laugh a wicked laugh, as they tar them on to
+the unnatural fight, till the gardens are all trampled, the finery torn,
+the halls dismantled, and each pavement slippery with brothers' blood.
+And then, when the wine is gone out of them, the survivors come to their
+senses, and stare shamefully and sadly round.  What an ugly, desolate,
+tottering ruin the fairy palace has become!  Have they spoilt it
+themselves? or have the Trolls bewitched it?  And all the fairy
+treasure--what has become of it? no man knows.  Have they thrown it away
+in their quarrel? have the cunningest hidden it? have the Trolls flown
+away with it, to the fairy land beyond the Eastern mountains? who can
+tell?  Nothing is left but recrimination and remorse.  And they wander
+back again into the forest, away from the doleful ruin, carrion-strewn,
+to sulk each apart over some petty spoil which he has saved from the
+general wreck, hating and dreading each the sound of his neighbour's
+footstep.
+
+What will become of the forest children, unless some kind saint or hermit
+comes among them, to bind them in the holy bonds of brotherhood and law?
+
+This is my saga, gentlemen; and it is a true one withal.  For it is
+neither more nor less than the story of the Teutonic tribes, and how they
+overthrew the Empire of Rome.
+
+Menzel, who though he may not rank very high as a historian, has at least
+a true German heart, opens his history with a striking passage.
+
+'The sages of the East were teaching wisdom beneath the palms; the
+merchants of Tyre and Carthage were weighing their heavy anchors, and
+spreading their purple sails for far seas; the Greek was making the earth
+fair by his art, and the Roman founding his colossal empire of force,
+while the Teuton sat, yet a child, unknown and naked among the forest
+beasts: and yet unharmed and in his sport he lorded it over them; for the
+child was of a royal race, and destined to win glory for all time to
+come.'
+
+To the strange and complicated education which God appointed for this
+race; and by which he has fitted it to become, at least for many
+centuries henceforth, the ruling race of the world, I wish to call your
+attention in my future lectures.  To-day, I wish to impress strongly on
+your minds this childishness of our forefathers.  For good or for evil
+they were great boys; very noble boys; very often very naughty boys--as
+boys with the strength of men might well be.  Try to conceive such to
+yourselves, and you have the old Markman, Allman, Goth, Lombard, Saxon,
+Frank.  And the notion may be more than a mere metaphor.  Races, like
+individuals, it has been often said, may have their childhood, their
+youth, their manhood, their old age, and natural death.  It is but a
+theory--perhaps nothing more.  But at least, our race had its childhood.
+Their virtues, and their sad failings, and failures, I can understand on
+no other theory.  The nearest type which we can see now is I fancy, the
+English sailor, or the English navvy.  A great, simple, honest, baby--full
+of power and fun, very coarse and plain spoken at times: but if treated
+like a human being, most affectionate, susceptible, even sentimental and
+superstitious; fond of gambling, brute excitement, childish amusements in
+the intervals of enormous exertion; quarrelsome among themselves, as boys
+are, and with a spirit of wild independence which seems to be strength;
+but which, till it be disciplined into loyal obedience and
+self-sacrifice, is mere weakness; and beneath all a deep practical
+shrewdness, an indomitable perseverance, when once roused by need.  Such
+a spirit as we see to this day in the English sailor--that is the nearest
+analogue I can find now.  One gets hints here and there of what manner of
+men they were, from the evil day, when, one hundred and two years before
+Christ, the Kempers and Teutons, ranging over the Alps toward Italy,
+300,000 armed men and 15,000 mailed knights with broad sword and lances,
+and in their helmets the same bulls'-horns, wings, and feathers, which
+one sees now in the crests of German princes, stumbled upon Marius and
+his Romans, and were destroyed utterly, first the men, then the women,
+who like true women as they were, rather than give up their honour to the
+Romans, hung themselves on the horns of the waggon-oxen, and were
+trampled to death beneath their feet; and then the very dogs, who fought
+on when men and women were all slain--from that fatal day, down to the
+glorious one, when, five hundred years after, Alaric stood beneath the
+walls of Rome, and to their despairing boast of the Roman numbers,
+answered, 'Come out to us then, the thicker the hay, the easier
+mowed,'--for five hundred years, I say, the hints of their character are
+all those of a boy-nature.
+
+They were cruel at times: but so are boys--much more cruel than grown
+men, I hardly know why--perhaps because they have not felt suffering so
+much themselves, and know not how hard it is to bear.  There were
+varieties of character among them.  The Franks were always false, vain,
+capricious, selfish, taking part with the Romans whenever their interest
+or vanity was at stake--the worst of all Teutons, though by no means the
+weakest--and a miserable business they made of it in France, for some
+five hundred years.  The Goths, Salvian says, were the most ignavi of all
+of them; great lazy lourdans; apt to be cruel, too, the Visigoths at
+least, as their Spanish descendants proved to the horror of the world:
+but men of honour withal, as those old Spaniards were.  The Saxons were
+famed for cruelty--I know not why, for our branch of the Saxons has been,
+from the beginning of history, the least cruel people in Europe; but they
+had the reputation--as the Vandals had also--of being the most pure;
+Castitate venerandi.  And among the uncivilized people coldness and
+cruelty go often together.  The less passionate and sensitive the nature,
+the less open to pity.  The Caribs of the West Indies were famed for
+both, in contrast to the profligate and gentle inhabitants of Cuba and
+Hispaniola; and in double contrast to the Red Indian tribes of North
+America, who combined, from our first acquaintance with them, the two
+vices of cruelty and profligacy, to an extent which has done more to
+extirpate them than all the fire-water of the white man.
+
+But we must be careful how we compare our forefathers with these, or any
+other savages.  Those who, like Gibbon, have tried to draw a parallel
+between the Red Indian and the Primaeval Teuton, have done so at the
+expense of facts.  First, they have overlooked the broad fact, that while
+the Red Indians have been, ever since we have known them, a decreasing
+race, the Teutons have been a rapidly increasing one; in spite of war,
+and famine, and all the ills of a precarious forest life, proving their
+youthful strength and vitality by a reproduction unparalleled, as far as
+I know, in history, save perhaps by that noble and young race, the
+Russian.  These writers have not known that the Teuton had his definite
+laws, more simple, doubtless, in the time of Tacitus than in that of
+Justinian, but still founded on abstract principles so deep and broad
+that they form the groundwork of our English laws and constitution; that
+the Teuton creed concerning the unseen world, and divine beings, was of a
+loftiness and purity as far above the silly legends of Hiawatha as the
+Teuton morals were above those of a Sioux or a Comanche.  Let any one
+read honest accounts of the Red Indians; let him read Catlin, James,
+Lewis and Clarke, Shoolbred; and first and best of all, the old 'Travaile
+in Virginia,' published by the Hakluyt Society: and then let him read the
+Germania of Tacitus, and judge for himself.  For my part, I believe that
+if Gibbon was right, and if our forefathers in the German forests had
+been like Powhattan's people as we found them in the Virginian forests,
+the Romans would not have been long in civilizing us off the face of the
+earth.
+
+No.  All the notes which Tacitus gives us are notes of a young and strong
+race; unconscious of its own capabilities, but possessing such
+capabilities that the observant Romans saw at once with dread and awe
+that they were face to face with such a people as they had never met
+before; that in their hands, sooner or later, might be the fate of Rome.
+Mad Caracalla, aping the Teuton dress and hair, listening in dread to the
+songs of the Allman Alrunas, telling the Teutons that they ought to come
+over the Rhine and destroy the empire, and then, murdering the
+interpreters, lest they should repeat his words, was but babbling out in
+an insane shape the thought which was brooding in the most far-seeing
+Roman minds.  He felt that they could have done the deed; and he felt
+rightly, madman as he was.  They could have done it then, if physical
+power and courage were all that was needed, in the days of the Allman
+war.  They could have done it a few years before, when the Markmen fought
+Marcus Aurelius Antoninus; on the day when the Caesar, at the advice of
+his augurs, sent two lions to swim across the Danube as a test of
+victory; and the simple Markmen took them for big dogs, and killed them
+with their clubs.  From that day, indeed, the Teutons began to conquer
+slowly, but surely.  Though Antoninus beat the Markmen on the Danube, and
+recovered 100,000 Roman prisoners, yet it was only by the help of the
+Vandals; from that day the empire was doomed, and the Teutons only kept
+at bay by bribing one tribe to fight another, or by enlisting their more
+adventurous spirits into the Roman legions, to fight against men of their
+own blood;--a short-sighted and suicidal policy; for by that very method
+they were teaching the Teuton all he needed, the discipline and the
+military science of the Roman.
+
+But the Teutons might have done it a hundred years before that, when Rome
+was in a death agony, and Vitellius and Vespasian were struggling for the
+purple, and Civilis and the fair Velleda, like Barak and Deborah of old,
+raised the Teuton tribes.  They might have done it before that again,
+when Hermann slew Varus and his legions in the Teutoburger Wald; or
+before that again, when the Kempers and Teutons burst over the Alps, to
+madden themselves with the fatal wines of the rich south.  And why did
+the Teutons _not_ do it?  Because they were boys fighting against cunning
+men.  Boiorich, the young Kemper, riding down to Marius' camp, to bid him
+fix the place and time of battle--for the Teuton thought it mean to use
+surprises and stratagems, or to conquer save in fair and open fight--is
+the type of the Teuton hero; and one which had no chance in a struggle
+with the cool, false, politic Roman, grown grey in the experience of the
+forum and of the camp, and still as physically brave as his young enemy.
+Because, too, there was no unity among them; no feeling that they were
+brethren of one blood.  Had the Teuton tribes, at any one of the great
+crises I have mentioned, and at many a crisis afterwards, united for but
+three years, under the feeling of a common blood, language, interest,
+destiny, Rome would have perished.  But they could not learn that lesson.
+They could not put aside their boyish quarrels.
+
+They never learnt the lesson till after their final victory, when the
+Gospel of Christ--of a Being to whom they all owed equal allegiance, in
+whose sight they were all morally equal--came to unite them into a
+Christendom.
+
+And it was well that they did not learn it sooner.  Well for them and for
+the world, that they did not unite on any false ground of interest or
+ambition, but had to wait for the true ground of unity, the knowledge of
+the God-man, King of all nations upon earth.
+
+Had they destroyed Rome sooner, what would not they have lost?  What
+would not the world have lost?  Christianity would have been stifled in
+its very cradle; and with Christianity all chance--be sure of it--of
+their own progress.  Roman law, order, and discipline, the very things
+which they needed to acquire by a contact of five hundred years, would
+have been swept away.  All classic literature and classic art, which they
+learnt to admire with an almost superstitious awe, would have perished
+likewise.  Greek philosophy, the germs of physical science, and all that
+we owe to the ancients, would have perished; and we should have truly had
+an invasion of the barbarians, followed by truly dark ages, in which
+Europe would have had to begin all anew, without the help of the
+generations which had gone before.
+
+Therefore it was well as it was, and God was just and merciful to them
+and to the human race.  They had a glorious destiny, and glorious powers
+wherewith to fulfil it: but they had, as every man and people has, before
+whom there is a noble future, to be educated by suffering.  There was
+before them a terrible experience of sorrow and disappointment, sin and
+blood, by which they gained the first consciousness of what they could do
+and what they could not.  Like Adam of old, like every man unto this day,
+they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and were driven
+out of the paradise of unconsciousness; had to begin again sadder and
+wiser men, and eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; and so to
+rise, after their fall, into a nobler, wiser, more artificial, and
+therefore more truly human and divine life, than that from which they had
+at first fallen, when they left their German wilds.
+
+One does not, of course, mean the parallel to fit in all details.  The
+fall of the Teuton from the noble simplicity in which Tacitus beheld and
+honoured him, was a work of four centuries; perhaps it was going on in
+Tacitus' own time.  But the culminating point was the century which saw
+Italy conquered, and Rome sacked, by Visigoth, by Ostrogoth, by Vandal,
+till nothing was left save fever-haunted ruins.  Then the ignorant and
+greedy child, who had been grasping so long after the fair apples of
+Sodom, clutched them once and for all, and found them turn to ashes in
+his hands.
+
+Yes--it is thus that I wish you to look at the Invasion of the
+Barbarians, Immigration of the Teutons, or whatsoever name you may call
+it.  Before looking at questions of migration, of ethnology, of laws, and
+of classes, look first at the thing itself; and see with sacred pity--and
+awe, one of the saddest and grandest tragedies ever performed on earth.
+Poor souls!  And they were so simple withal.  One pities them, as one
+pities a child who steals apples, and makes himself sick with them after
+all.  It is not the enormous loss of life which is to me the most tragic
+part of the story; it is that very simplicity of the Teutons.  Bloodshed
+is a bad thing, certainly; but after all nature is prodigal of human
+life--killing her twenty thousand and her fifty thousand by a single
+earthquake; and as for death in battle--I sometimes am tempted to think,
+having sat by many death beds, that our old forefathers may have been
+right, and that death in battle may be a not unenviable method of passing
+out of this troublesome world.  Besides, we have no right to blame those
+old Teutons, while we are killing every year more of her Majesty's
+subjects by preventible disease, than ever they killed in their bloodiest
+battle.  Let us think of that, and mend that, ere we blame the old German
+heroes.  No, there are more pitiful tragedies than any battlefield can
+shew; and first among them, surely, is the disappointment of young hopes,
+the degradation of young souls.
+
+One pities them, I say.  And they pitied themselves.  Remorse, shame,
+sadness, mark the few legends and songs of the days which followed the
+fall of Rome.  They had done a great work.  They had destroyed a mighty
+tyranny; they had parted between them the spoils wrung from all the
+nations; they had rid the earth of a mighty man-devouring ogre, whose
+hands had been stretched out for centuries over all the earth, dragging
+all virgins to his den, butchering and torturing thousands for his sport;
+foul, too, with crimes for which their language, like our own (thank God)
+has scarcely found a name.  Babylon the Great, drunken with the blood of
+the saints, had fallen at last before the simple foresters of the north:
+but if it looks a triumph to us, it looked not such to them.  They could
+only think how they had stained their hands in their brothers' blood.
+They had got the fatal Nibelungen hoard: but it had vanished between
+their hands, and left them to kill each other, till none was left.
+
+You know the Nibelungen Lied?  That expresses, I believe, the key-note of
+the old Teuton's heart, after his work was done.  Siegfried murdered by
+his brother-in-law; fair Chriemhild turned into an avenging fury; the
+heroes hewing each other down, they scarce know why, in Hunnish Etzel's
+hall, till Hagen and Gunther stand alone; Dietrich of Bern going in, to
+bind the last surviving heroes; Chriemhild shaking Hagen's gory head in
+Gunther's face, himself hewed down by the old Hildebrand, till nothing is
+left but stark corpses and vain tears:--while all the while the
+Nibelungen hoard, the cause of all the woe, lies drowned in the deep
+Rhine until the judgment day.--What is all this, but the true tale of the
+fall of Rome, of the mad quarrels of the conquering Teutons?  The names
+are confused, mythic; the dates and places all awry: but the tale is
+true--too true.  Mutato nomine fabula narratur.  Even so they went on,
+killing, till none were left.  Deeds as strange, horrible, fratricidal,
+were done, again and again, not only between Frank and Goth, Lombard and
+Gepid, but between Lombard and Lombard, Frank and Frank.  Yes, they were
+drunk with each other's blood, those elder brethren of ours.  Let us
+thank God that we did not share their booty, and perish, like them, from
+the touch of the fatal Nibelungen hoard.  Happy for us Englishmen, that
+we were forced to seek our adventures here, in this lonely isle; to turn
+aside from the great stream of Teutonic immigration; and settle here,
+each man on his forest-clearing, to till the ground in comparative peace,
+keeping unbroken the old Teutonic laws, unstained the old Teutonic faith
+and virtue, cursed neither with poverty nor riches, but fed with food
+sufficient for us.  To us, indeed, after long centuries, peace brought
+sloth, and sloth foreign invaders and bitter woes: but better so, than
+that we should have cast away alike our virtue and our lives, in that mad
+quarrel over the fairy gold of Rome.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE II--THE DYING EMPIRE.
+
+
+It is not for me to trace the rise, or even the fall of the Roman Empire.
+That would be the duty rather of a professor of ancient history, than of
+modern.  All I need do is to sketch, as shortly as I can, the state in
+which the young world found the old, when it came in contact with it.
+
+The Roman Empire, toward the latter part of the fourth century, was in
+much the same condition as the Chinese or the Turkish Empire in our own
+days.  Private morality (as Juvenal and Persius will tell you), had
+vanished long before.  Public morality had, of course, vanished likewise.
+The only powers really recognised were force and cunning.  The only aim
+was personal enjoyment.  The only God was the Divus Caesar, the imperial
+demigod, whose illimitable brute force gave him illimitable powers of
+self-enjoyment, and made him thus the paragon and ideal of humanity, whom
+all envied, flattered, hated, and obeyed.  The palace was a sink of
+corruption, where eunuchs, concubines, spies, informers, freedmen,
+adventurers, struggled in the basest plots, each for his share of the
+public plunder.  The senate only existed to register the edicts of their
+tyrant, and if need be, destroy each other, or any one else, by judicial
+murders, the willing tools of imperial cruelty.  The government was
+administered (at least since the time of Diocletian) by an official
+bureaucracy, of which Professor Goldwin Smith well says, 'the earth
+swarmed with the consuming hierarchy of extortion, so that it was said
+that they who received taxes were more than those who paid them.'  The
+free middle class had disappeared, or lingered in the cities, too proud
+to labour, fed on government bounty, and amused by government spectacles.
+With them, arts and science had died likewise.  Such things were left to
+slaves, and became therefore, literally, servile imitations of the past.
+What, indeed, was not left to slaves?  Drawn without respect of rank, as
+well as of sex and age, from every nation under heaven by an organized
+slave-trade, to which our late African one was but a tiny streamlet
+compared with a mighty river; a slave-trade which once bought 10,000
+human beings in Delos in a single day; the 'servorum nationes' were the
+only tillers of the soil, of those 'latifundia' or great estates, 'quae
+perdidere Romam.'  Denied the rights of marriage, the very name of
+humanity; protected by no law, save the interest or caprice of their
+masters; subjected, for slight offences, to cruel torments, they were
+butchered by thousands in the amphitheatres to make a Roman holiday, or
+wore out their lives in 'ergastula' or barracks, which were dens of
+darkness and horror.  Their owners, as 'senatores,' 'clarissimi,' or at
+least 'curiales,' spent their lives in the cities, luxurious and
+effeminate, and left their slaves to the tender mercy of 'villici,'
+stewards and gang-drivers, who were themselves slaves likewise.
+
+More pampered, yet more degraded, were the crowds of wretched beings, cut
+off from all the hopes of humanity, who ministered to the wicked
+pleasures of their masters, even in the palaces of nominally Christian
+emperors--but over that side of Roman slavery I must draw a veil, only
+saying, that the atrocities of the Romans toward their slaves--especially
+of this last and darkest kind--notably drew down on them the just wrath
+and revenge of those Teutonic nations, from which so many of their slaves
+were taken. {19}
+
+And yet they called themselves Christians--to whom it had been said, 'Be
+not deceived, God is not mocked.  For these things cometh the wrath of
+God on the children of disobedience.'  And the wrath did come.
+
+If such were the morals of the Empire, what was its political state?  One
+of complete disorganization.  The only uniting bond left seems to have
+been that of the bureaucracy, the community of tax-gatherers, who found
+it on the whole safer and more profitable to pay into the imperial
+treasury a portion of their plunder, than to keep it all themselves.  It
+stood by mere vi inertiae, just because it happened to be there, and
+there was nothing else to put in its place.  Like an old tree whose every
+root is decayed, it did not fall, simply because the storm had not yet
+come.  Storms, indeed, had come; but they had been partial and local.  One
+cannot look into the pages of Gibbon, without seeing that the normal
+condition of the empire was one of revolt, civil war,
+invasion--Pretenders, like Carausius and Allectus in Britain, setting
+themselves up as emperors for awhile--Bands of brigands, like the Bagaudae
+of Gaul, and the Circumcelliones of Africa, wandering about, desperate
+with hunger and revenge, to slay and pillage--Teutonic tribes making
+forays on the frontier, enlisted into the Roman armies, and bought off,
+or hired to keep back the tribes behind them, and perish by their
+brethren's swords.
+
+What kept the empire standing, paradoxical as it may seem, was its own
+innate weakness.  From within, at least, it could not be overthrown.  The
+masses were too crushed to rise.  Without unity, purpose, courage, they
+submitted to inevitable misery as to rain and thunder.  At most they
+destroyed their own children from poverty, or, as in Egypt, fled by
+thousands into the caves and quarries, and turned monks and hermits;
+while the upper classes, equally without unity or purpose, said each to
+himself, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
+
+The state of things at Rome, and after the rise of Byzantium under
+Constantine at Byzantium likewise, was one altogether fantastic,
+abnormal, utterly unlike anything that we have seen, or can imagine to
+ourselves without great effort.  I know no better method of illustrating
+it, than quoting, from Mr. Sheppard's excellent book, _The Fall of Rome
+and the Rise of New Nationalities_, a passage in which he transfers the
+whole comi-tragedy from Italy of old to England in 1861.
+
+'I have not thought it necessary to give a separate and distinct reply to
+the theory of Mr. Congreve, that Roman Imperialism was the type of all
+good government, and a desirable precedent for ourselves.  Those who feel
+any penchant for the notion, I should strongly recommend to read the
+answer of Professor G. Smith, in the _Oxford Essays_ for 1856, which is
+as complete and crushing as that gentleman's performances usually are.
+But in order to convey to the uninitiated some idea of the state of
+society under Caesarian rule, and which a Caesarian rule, so far as mere
+government is concerned, if it does not produce, has never shewn any
+tendency to prevent, let us give reins to imagination for a moment, and
+picture to ourselves a few social and political analogies in our own
+England of the nineteenth century.
+
+'An entire revolution has taken place in our principles, manners, and
+form of government.  Parliaments, meetings, and all the ordinary
+expressions of the national will, are no longer in existence.  A free
+press has shared their fate.  There is no accredited organ of public
+opinion; indeed there is no public opinion to record.  Lords and Commons
+have been swept away, though a number of the richest old gentlemen in
+London meet daily at Westminster to receive orders from Buckingham
+Palace.  But at the palace itself has broken out one of those sanguinary
+conspiracies which have of late become unceasing.  The last heir of the
+house of Brunswick is lying dead with a dagger in his heart, and
+everything is in frightful confusion.  The armed force of the capital are
+of course "masters of the situation," and the Guards, after a tumultuous
+meeting at Windsor or Knightsbridge, have sold the throne to Baron
+Rothschild, for a handsome donation of 25 pounds a-piece.  Lord Clyde,
+however, we may be sure, is not likely to stand this, and in a few months
+will be marching upon London at the head of the Indian Army.  In the mean
+time the Channel Fleet has declared for its own commander, has seized
+upon Plymouth and Portsmouth, and intends to starve the metropolis by
+stopping the imports of "bread-stuffs" at the mouth of the Thames.  And
+this has become quite possible; for half the population of London, under
+the present state of things, subsist upon free distributions of corn
+dispensed by the occupant of the throne for the time being.  But a more
+fatal change than even this has come over the population of the capital
+and of the whole country.  The free citizens and 'prentices of London;
+the sturdy labourers of Dorsetshire and the eastern counties; and the
+skilful artizans of Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham; the mariners
+and shipwrights of Liverpool, have been long ago drafted into marching
+regiments, and have left their bones to bleach beneath Indian suns and
+Polar snows.  Their place has been supplied by countless herds of negro
+slaves, who till the fields and crowd the workshops of our towns, to the
+entire exclusion of free labour; for the free population, or rather the
+miserable relics of them, disdain all manual employment: they divide
+their time between starvation and a degrading debauchery, the means for
+which are sedulously provided by the government.  The time-honoured
+institutions of the bull-bait, the cockpit, and the ring, are in daily
+operation, under the most distinguished patronage.  Hyde Park has been
+converted into a gigantic arena, where criminals from Newgate "set-to"
+with the animals from the Zoological Gardens.  Every fortnight there is a
+Derby Day, and the whole population pour into the Downs with frantic
+excitement, leaving the city to the slaves.  And then the moral condition
+of this immense mass!  Of the doings about the palace we should be sorry
+to speak.  But the lady patronesses of Almack's still more assiduously
+patronize the prize-fights, and one of them has been seen within the
+ropes, in battle array, by the side of Sayers himself.  No tongue may
+tell the orgies enacted, with the aid of French cooks, Italian singers,
+and foreign artists of all sorts, in the gilded saloons of Park Lane and
+Mayfair.  Suffice to say, that in them the worst passions of human nature
+have full swing, unmodified by any thought of human or divine restraints,
+and only dashed a little now and then by the apprehension that the slaves
+may rise, and make a clean sweep of the metropolis with fire and steel.
+But _n'importe_--_Vive la bagatelle_!  Mario has just been appointed
+prime minister, and has made a chorus singer from the Opera Duke of
+Middlesex and Governor-General of India.  All wise men and all good men
+despair of the state, but they are not permitted to say anything, much
+less to act.  Mr. Disraeli lost his head a few days ago; Lords Palmerston
+and Derby lie in the Tower under sentence of death; Lord Brougham, the
+Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mr. Gladstone, opened their veins and died
+in a warm bath last week.  Foreign relations will make a still greater
+demand on the reader's imagination.  We must conceive of England no
+longer as
+
+   "A precious stone set in the silver sea,
+   Which serves it in the office of a wall,
+   Or as a moat defensive of a house."
+
+but rather as open to the inroad of every foe whom her aggressive and
+colonizing genius has provoked.  The red man of the West, the Caffre, the
+Sikh, and the Sepoy, Chinese braves, and fierce orientals of all sorts,
+are hovering on her frontiers in "numbers numberless," as the flakes of
+snow in the northern winter.  They are not the impotent enemy which we
+know, but vigorous races, supplied from inexhaustible founts of
+population, and animated by an insatiate appetite for the gold and
+silver, purple and fine linen, rich meats and intoxicating drinks of our
+effete civilization.  And we can no longer oppose them with those
+victorious legions which have fought and conquered in all regions of the
+world.  The men of Waterloo and Inkermann are no more.  We are compelled
+to recruit our armies from those very tribes before whose swords we are
+receding!
+
+'Doubtless the ordinary reader will believe this picture to be
+overcharged, drawn with manifest exaggeration, and somewhat questionable
+taste.  _Every single statement which it contains_ may be paralleled by
+the circumstances and events of the decadence of the Roman Empire.  The
+analogous situation was with the subjects of this type of all good
+government, _always a possible_, often an actual, state of things.  We
+think this disposes of the theory of Mr. Congreve.  With it may
+advantageously be contrasted the opinion of a man of more statesman-like
+mind.  "The benefits of despotism are short-lived; it poisons the very
+springs which it lays open; if it display a merit, it is an exceptional
+one; if a virtue, it is created of circumstances; and when once this
+better hour has passed away, all the vices of its nature break forth with
+redoubled violence, and weigh down society in every direction."  So
+writes M. Guizot.  Is it the language of prophecy as well as of personal
+experience?'
+
+Mr. Sheppard should have added, to make the picture complete, that the
+Irish have just established popery across St. George's Channel, by the
+aid of re-immigrants from America; that Free Kirk and National Kirk are
+carrying on a sanguinary civil war in Scotland; that the Devonshire
+Wesleyans have just sacked Exeter cathedral, and murdered the Bishop at
+the altar, while the Bishop of London, supported by the Jews and the rich
+churchmen (who are all mixed up in financial operations with Baron
+Rothschild) has just commanded all Dissenters to leave the metropolis
+within three days, under pain of death.
+
+I must add yet one more feature to this fearful, but accurate picture,
+and say how, a few generations forward, an even uglier thing would be
+seen.  The English aristocracy would have been absorbed by foreign
+adventurers.  The grandchildren of these slaves and mercenaries would be
+holding the highest offices in the state and the army, naming themselves
+after the masters who had freed them, or disguising their barbarian names
+by English endings.  The De Fung-Chowvilles would be Dukes, the Little-
+grizzly-bear-Joe-Smiths Earls, and the Fitz-Stanleysons, descended from a
+king of the gipsies who enlisted to avoid transportation, and in due time
+became Commander-in-Chief, would rule at Knowsley in place of the Earl of
+Derby, having inherited the same by the summary process of assassination.
+Beggars on horseback, only too literally; married, most of them, to
+Englishwomen of the highest rank; but looking on England merely as a
+prey; without patriotism, without principle; they would destroy the old
+aristocracy by legal murders, grind the people, fight against their yet
+barbarian cousins outside, as long as they were in luck: but the moment
+the luck turned against them, would call in those barbarian cousins to
+help them, and invade England every ten years with heathen hordes, armed
+no more with tulwar and matchlock, but with Enfield rifle and Whitworth
+cannon.  And that, it must be agreed, would be about the last phase of
+the British empire.  If you will look through the names which figure in
+the high places of the Roman empire, during the fourth and fifth
+centuries, you will see how few of them are really Roman.  If you will
+try to investigate, not their genealogies--for they have none--not a
+grandfather among them--but the few facts of their lives which have come
+down to us; you will see how that Nemesis had fallen on her which must at
+last fall on every nation which attempts to establish itself on slavery
+as a legal basis.  Rome had become the slave of her own slaves.
+
+It is at this last period, the point when Rome has become the slave of
+her own slaves, that I take up the story of our Teutonic race.
+
+I do not think that anyone will call either Mr. Sheppard's statements, or
+mine, exaggerated, who knows the bitter complaints of the wickedness and
+folly of the time, which are to be found in the writings of the Emperor
+Julian.  Pedant and apostate as he was, he devoted his short life to one
+great idea, the restoration of the Roman Empire to what it had been (as
+he fancied) in the days of the virtuous stoic Emperors of the second
+century.  He found his dream a dream, owing to the dead heap of
+frivolity, sensuality, brutality, utter unbelief, not merely in the dead
+Pagan gods whom he vainly tried to restore, but in any god at all, as a
+living, ruling, judging, rewarding, punishing power.
+
+No one, again, will call these statements exaggerated who knows the Roman
+history of his faithful servant and soldier, Ammianus Marcellinus, and
+especially the later books of it, in which he sets forth the state of the
+Empire after Julian's death, under Jovian, Procopius, Valentinian, (who
+kept close to his bed-chamber two she-bears who used to eat men, one
+called Golden Camel, and the other Innocence--which latter, when she had
+devoured a sufficiency of his living victims, he set free in the forests
+as a reward for her services--a brutal tyrant, whose only virtue seems to
+have been his chastity); and Valens, the shameless extortioner who
+perished in that great battle of Adrianople, of which more hereafter.  The
+last five remaining books of the honest soldier's story are a tissue of
+horrors, from reading which one turns away as from a slaughter-house or a
+witches' sabbath.
+
+No one, again, will think these statements exaggerated who knows
+Salvian's De Gubernatione Dei.  It has been always and most justly held
+in high esteem, as one great authority of the state of Gaul when
+conquered by the Franks and Goths and Vandals.
+
+Salvian was a Christian gentleman, born somewhere near Treves.  He
+married a Pagan lady of Cologne, converted her, had by her a daughter,
+and then persuaded her to devote herself to celibacy, while he did the
+like.  His father-in-law, Hypatius, quarrelled with him on this account;
+and the letter in which he tries to soothe the old man is still extant, a
+curious specimen of the style of cultivated men in that day.  Salvian
+then went down to the south of France and became a priest at Marseilles,
+and tutor to the sons of Eucherius, the Bishop of Lyons.  Eucherius,
+himself a good man, speaks in terms of passionate admiration of Salvian,
+his goodness, sanctity, learning, talents.  Gennadius (who describes him
+as still living when he wrote, about 490) calls him among other
+encomiums, the Master of Bishops; and both mention familiarly this very
+work, by which he became notorious in his own day, and which he wrote
+about 450 or 455, during the invasion of the Britons.  So that we may
+trust fully that we have hold of an authentic contemporaneous work,
+written by a good man and true.
+
+Let me first say a few words on the fact of his having--as many good men
+did then--separated from his wife in order to lead what was called a
+religious life.  It has a direct bearing on the History of those days.
+One must not praise him because he (in common with all Christians of his
+day) held, no doubt, the belief that marriage was a degradation in
+itself; that though the Church might mend it somewhat by exalting it into
+a sacrament, still, the less of a bad thing the better:--a doctrine
+against which one need not use (thank God) in England, the same language
+which Michelet has most justly used in France.  We, being safe from the
+poison, can afford to talk of it calmly.  But I boldly assert, that few
+more practically immoral doctrines than that of the dignity of celibacy
+and the defilement of marriage (which was the doctrine of all Christian
+devotees for 1000 years) have, as far as I know, ever been preached to
+man.  That is a strong statement.  It will be answered perhaps, by the
+patent fact, that during those very 1000 years the morality of Europe
+improved more, and more rapidly, than it had ever done before.  I know
+it; and I thank God for it.  But I adhere to my statement, and rejoin--And
+how much more rapidly have the morals of Europe improved, since that
+doctrine has been swept away; and woman, and the love of woman, have been
+restored to their rightful place in the education of man?
+
+But if we do not praise Salvian, we must not blame him, or any one else
+who meant to be an honest and good man.  Such did not see to what their
+celibate notions would lead.  If they had, we must believe that they
+would have acted differently.  And what is more, their preference for
+celibacy was not fancy, but common sense of a very lofty kind.  Be sure
+that when two middle-aged Christian people consider it best to part, they
+have very good reasons for such a solemn step, at which only boys or
+cynics will laugh.  And the reasons, in Salvian's case, and many more in
+his day, are patent to common human understanding.  Do not fancy that he
+had any private reason, such as we should very fairly assign now: public
+reasons, and those, such as God grant no living man may see, caused wise
+men to thank God that they were not burdened with wife and child.
+Remember the years in which Salvian lived--from 416 perhaps to 490.  It
+was a day of the Lord such as Joel saw; 'a day of clouds and of thick
+darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains; a great people and
+strong; there had not been ever the like, neither should be any more
+after it: the land was a garden of Eden before them, and behind them a
+desolate wilderness: Yea, and nothing should escape them.'  All things
+were going to wrack; the country was overrun by foreign invaders;
+bankruptcy, devastation, massacre, and captivity were for perhaps 100
+years the normal state of Gaul, and of most other countries besides.  I
+have little doubt that Salvian was a prudent man, when he thought fit to
+bring no more human beings into the world.  That is an ugly thought--I
+trust that you feel how ugly, unnatural, desperate a thought it is.  If
+you do not, think over it till you do, till it frightens you.  You will
+gain a great step thereby in human sympathy, and therefore in the
+understanding of history.  For many times, and in many places, men have
+said, rightly or wrongly, 'It is better to leave none behind me like
+myself.  The miseries of life (and of what comes after this life) are
+greater than its joys.  I commit an act of cruelty by bringing a fresh
+human being into the world.'  I wish you to look at that thought
+steadily, and apply it for yourselves.  It has many applications: and has
+therefore been a very common one.
+
+But put to yourselves--it is too painful for me to put to you--the case
+of a married gentleman who sees his country gradually devastated and
+brought to utter ruin by foreign invaders; and who feels--as poor Salvian
+felt, that there is no hope or escape; that the misery is merited,
+deserved, fairly _earned_ (for that is the true meaning of those words),
+and therefore must come.  Conceive him seeing around him estates
+destroyed, farms burnt, ladies and gentlemen, his own friends and
+relations, reduced in an hour to beggary, plundered, stript, driven off
+in gangs--I do not choose to finish the picture: but ask yourselves,
+would an honourable man wish to bring sons--much more daughters--into the
+world to endure that?
+
+Put yourselves in Salvian's place.  Forget for a few minutes that you are
+Englishmen, the freest and bravest nation upon earth, strong in all that
+gives real strength, and with a volunteer army which is now formidable by
+numbers and courage--which, did the terrible call come, might be
+increased ten times in as many months.  Forget all that awhile; and put
+yourselves in Salvian's place, the gentleman of Gaul, while Franks and
+Goths, Burgunds and Vandals were sweeping, wave after wave, over that
+lovely land; and judge him rationally, and talk as little as possible of
+his superstition, and as much as possible of his human feeling, prudence,
+self-control, and common sense.  Believe me, neither celibacy, nor any
+other seemingly unnatural superstition would have held its ground for a
+generation if there had not been some practical considerations of common
+sense to back them.  We wonder why men in old times went into
+monasteries.  The simplest answer is, common sense sent them thither.
+They were tired of being the slaves of their own passions; they were
+tired of killing, and of running the chance of being killed.  They saw
+society, the whole world, going to wrack, as they thought, around them:
+what could they do better, than see that their own characters, morals,
+immortal souls did not go to wrack with the rest.  We wonder why women,
+especially women of rank, went into convents; why, as soon as a community
+of monks was founded, a community of nuns sprung up near them.  The
+simplest answer is, common sense sent them thither.  The men, especially
+of the upper fighting classes, were killed off rapidly; the women were
+not killed off, and a large number always remained, who, if they had
+wished to marry, could not.  What better for them than to seek in
+convents that peace which this world could not give?
+
+They may have mixed up with that simple wish for peace the notion of
+being handmaids of God, brides of Christ, and so forth.  Be it so.  Let
+us instead of complaining, thank heaven that there was some motive,
+whether quite right or not, to keep alive in them self-respect, and the
+feeling that they were not altogether useless and aimless on earth.  Look
+at the question in this light, and you will understand two things; first,
+how horrible the times were, and secondly, why there grew up in the early
+middle age a passion for celibacy.
+
+Salvian, in a word, had already grown up to manhood and reason, when he
+saw a time come to his native country, in which were fulfilled, with
+fearful exactness, the words of the prophet Isaiah:--
+
+   'Behold, the Lord maketh the land empty, and maketh it waste, and
+   turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof.
+   And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the
+   slave, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as
+   with the seller, so with the buyer; as with the lender, so with the
+   borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to
+   him.  The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled; for the
+   Lord hath spoken this word.'
+
+And Salvian desired to know the reason why the Lord had spoken that word,
+and read his Bible till he found out, and wrote thereon his book De
+Gubernatione Dei, of the government of God; and a very noble book it is.
+He takes his stand on the ground of Scripture, with which he shews an
+admirable acquaintance.  The few good were expecting the end of the
+world.  Christ was coming to put an end to all these horrors: but why did
+he delay his coming?  The many weak were crying that God had given up the
+world; that Christ had deserted his Church, and delivered over Christians
+to the cruelties of heathen and Arian barbarians.  The many bad were
+openly blaspheming, throwing off in despair all faith, all bonds of
+religion, all common decency, and crying, Let us eat and drink, for to-
+morrow we die.  Salvian answers them like an old Hebrew prophet: 'The
+Lord's arm is not shortened.  The Lord's eyes are not closed.  The Lord
+is still as near as ever.  He is governing the world as He has always
+governed it: by the everlasting moral laws, by which the wages of sin are
+death.  Your iniquities have withheld good things from you.  You have
+earned exactly what God has paid you.  Yourselves are your own
+punishment.  You have been wicked men, and therefore weak men; your own
+vices, and not the Goths, have been your true conquerors.'  As I said in
+my inaugural lecture--that is after all the true theory of history.  Men
+may forget it in piping times of peace.  God grant that in the dark hour
+of adversity, God may always raise up to them a prophet, like good old
+Salvian, to preach to them once again the everlasting judgments of God;
+and teach them that not faulty constitutions, faulty laws, faulty
+circumstances of any kind, but the faults of their own hearts and lives,
+are the causes of their misery.
+
+M. Guizot, in his elaborate work on the History of Civilization in
+France, has a few curious pages, on the causes of the decline of civil
+society in Roman Gaul, and its consequent weakness and ruin.  He tells
+you how the Senators or Clarissimi did not constitute a true aristocracy,
+able to lead and protect the people, being at the mercy of the Emperor,
+and nominated and removed at his pleasure.  How the Curiales, or wealthy
+middle class, who were bound by law to fulfil all the municipal offices,
+and were responsible for the collection of the revenue, found their
+responsibilities so great, that they by every trick in their power,
+avoided office.  How, as M. Guizot well puts it, the central despotism of
+Rome stript the Curiales of all they earned, to pay its own functionaries
+and soldiers; and gave them the power of appointing magistrates, who were
+only after all the imperial agents of that despotism, for whose sake they
+robbed their fellow-citizens.  How the plebs, comprising the small
+tradesmen and free artizans, were utterly unable to assert their own
+opinions or rights.  How the slave population, though their condition was
+much improved, constituted a mere dead weight of helpless brutality.
+
+And then he says, that the Roman Empire was dying.  Very true: but often
+as he quotes Salvian, he omits always to tell us what Roman society was
+dying of.  Salvian says, that it was dying of vice.  Not of bad laws and
+class arrangements, but of bad men.  M. Guizot belongs to a school which
+is apt to impute human happiness and prosperity too exclusively to the
+political constitution under which they may happen to live,
+irrespectively of the morality of the people themselves.  From that, the
+constitutionalist school, there has been of late a strong reaction, the
+highest exponent, nay the very coryphaeus of which is Mr. Carlyle.  He
+undervalues, even despises, the influence of laws and constitutions: with
+him private virtue, from which springs public virtue, is the first and
+sole cause of national prosperity.  My inaugural lecture has told you how
+deeply I sympathize with his view--taking my stand, as Mr. Carlyle does,
+on the Hebrew prophets.
+
+There is, nevertheless, a side of truth in the constitutionalist view,
+which Mr. Carlyle, I think, overlooks.  A bad political constitution does
+produce poverty and weakness: but only in as far as it tends to produce
+moral evil; to make men bad.  That it can help to do.  It can put a
+premium on vice, on falsehood, on peculation, on laziness, on ignorance;
+and thus tempt the mass to moral degradation, from the premier to the
+slave.  Russia has been, for two centuries now but too patent a proof of
+the truth of this assertion.  But even in this case, the moral element is
+the most important, and just the one which is overlooked.  To have good
+laws, M. Guizot is apt to forget, you must first have good men to make
+them; and second, you must have good men to carry them out, after they
+are made.  Bad men can abuse the best of laws, the best of constitutions.
+Look at the working of our parliaments during the reigns of William III
+and Anne, and see how powerless good constitutions are, when the men who
+work them are false and venal.  Look, on the other hand, at the Roman
+Empire from the time of Vespasian to that of the Antonines, and see how
+well even a bad constitution will succeed, when good men are working it.
+
+Bad laws, I say, will work tolerably under good men, if fitted to the
+existing circumstances by men of the world, as all Roman laws were.  If
+they had not been such, how was the Roman Empire, at least in its first
+years, a blessing to the safety, prosperity, and wealth of every country
+it enslaved?  But when defective Roman laws began to be worked by bad
+men, and that for 200 years, then indeed came times of evil.  Let us
+take, then, Salvian's own account of the cause of Roman decay.  He, an
+eye-witness, imputes it all to the morals of Roman citizens.  They were,
+according to him, of the very worst.  To the general dissoluteness he
+attributes, in plain words, the success of the Frank and Gothic invaders.
+And the facts which he gives, and which there is no reason to doubt, are
+quite enough to prove him in the right.  Every great man's house, he
+says, was a sink of profligacy.  The women slaves were at the mercy of
+their master; and the slaves copied his morals among themselves.  It is
+an ugly picture: but common sense will tell us, if we but think a little,
+that such will, and must, be the case in slave-holding countries,
+wherever Christianity is not present in its purest and strongest form, to
+control the passions of arbitrary power.
+
+But there was not merely profligacy among these Gauls.  That alone would
+not have wrought their immediate ruin.  Morals were bad enough in old
+Greece and Rome; as they were afterwards among the Turks: nevertheless as
+long as a race is strong; as long as there is prudence, energy, deep
+national feeling, outraged virtue does not avenge itself at once by
+general ruin.  But it avenges itself at last, as Salvian shews--as all
+experience shews.  As in individuals so in nations, unbridled indulgence
+of the passions must produce, and does produce, frivolity, effeminacy,
+slavery to the appetite of the moment, a brutalized and reckless temper,
+before which, prudence, energy, national feeling, any and every feeling
+which is not centered in self, perishes utterly.  The old French noblesse
+gave a proof of this law, which will last as a warning beacon to the end
+of time.  The Spanish population of America, I am told, gives now a
+fearful proof of this same terrible penalty.  Has not Italy proved it
+likewise, for centuries past?  It must be so, gentlemen.  For national
+life is grounded on, is the development of, the life of the family.  And
+where the root is corrupt, the tree must be corrupt likewise.  It must be
+so.  For Asmodeus does not walk alone.  In his train follow impatience
+and disappointment, suspicion and jealousy, rage and cruelty, and all the
+passions which set man's hand against his fellow-man.  It must be so.  For
+profligacy is selfishness; and the family, and the society, the nation,
+exists only by casting away selfishness and by obeying law:--not only the
+outward law, which says in the name of God, 'Thou shalt not,' but the
+inward law, the Law of Christ, which says, 'Thou must;' the law of self-
+sacrifice, which selfish lust tramples under foot, till there is no more
+cohesion left between man and man, no more trust, no more fellow-help,
+than between the stags who fight for the hinds; and God help the nation
+which has brought itself to that!
+
+No wonder, therefore, if Salvian's accounts of Gaulish profligacy be
+true, that Gaulish recklessness reached at last a pitch all but
+incredible.  It is credible, however shocking, that as he says, he
+himself saw, both at Treves, and another great city (probably Cologne,
+Colonia Agrippina, or 'The Colony' par excellence) while the destruction
+of the state was imminent, 'old men of rank, decrepit Christians, slaves
+to gluttony and lust, rabid with clamour, furious with bacchanalian
+orgies.'  It is credible, however shocking, that all through Gaul the
+captivity was 'foreseen, yet never dreaded.'  And 'so when the barbarians
+had encamped almost in sight, there was no terror among the people, no
+care of the cities.  All was possest by carelessness and sloth, gluttony,
+drunkenness, sleep, according to that which the prophet saith: A sleep
+from the Lord had come over them.'  It is credible, however shocking,
+that though Treves was four times taken by the barbarians, it remained
+just as reckless as ever; and that--I quote Salvian still--when the
+population was half destroyed by fire and sword, the poor dying of
+famine, corpses of men and women lying about the streets breeding
+pestilence, while the dogs devoured them, the few nobles who were left
+comforted themselves by sending to the Emperor to beg for Circensian
+games.
+
+Those Circensian games, and indeed all the public spectacles, are fresh
+proofs of what I said just now; that if a bad people earn bad government,
+still a bad government makes a bad people.
+
+They were the most extraordinary instance which the world ever saw, of a
+government setting to work at a vast expense to debauch its subjects.
+Whether the Roman rulers set that purpose consciously before them, one
+dare not affirm.  Their notion probably was (for they were as worldly
+wise as they were unprincipled) that the more frivolous and sensual the
+people were, the more quietly they would submit to slavery; and the best
+way to keep them frivolous and sensual, the Romans knew full well; so
+well, that after the Empire became Christian, and many heathen matters
+were done away with, they did not find it safe to do away with the public
+spectacles.  The temples of the Gods might go: but not the pantomimes.
+
+In one respect, indeed, these government spectacles became worse, not
+better, under Christianity.  They were less cruel, no doubt: but also
+they were less beautiful.  The old custom of exhibiting representations
+of the old Greek myths, which had something of grace and poetry about
+them, and would carry back the spectators' thoughts to the nobler and
+purer heroic ages, disappeared before Christianity; but the old vice did
+not.  That was left; and no longer ennobled by the old heroic myths round
+which it had clustered itself, was simply of the silliest and most vulgar
+kind.  We know in detail the abominations, as shameless and ridiculous,
+which went on a century after Salvian, in the theatres of Constantinople,
+under the eyes of the most Christian Emperor Justinian, and which won for
+that most infamous woman, Theodora, a share in his imperial crown, and
+the right to dictate doctrine to the Christian Bishops of the East, and
+to condemn the soul of Origen to everlasting damnation, for having
+exprest hopes of the final pardon of sinners.  We can well believe,
+therefore, Salvian's complaints of the wickedness of those pantomimes of
+which he says, that 'honeste non possunt vel accusari;' he cannot even
+accuse them without saying what he is ashamed to say; I believe also his
+assertion, that they would not let people be modest, even if they wished;
+that they inflamed the passions, and debauched the imaginations of young
+and old, man and woman, and--but I am not here to argue that sin is sin,
+or that the population of London would be the worse if the most shameless
+persons among them were put by the Government in possession of Drury Lane
+and Covent Garden; and that, and nothing less than that, did the Roman
+pantomimes mean, from the days of Juvenal till those of the most holy and
+orthodox Empress Theodora.
+
+'Who, knowing the judgment of God, that they who do such things are
+worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do
+them.'
+
+Now in contrast to all these abominations, old Salvian sets, boldly and
+honestly, the superior morality of the barbarians.  That, he says, is the
+cause of their strength and our weakness.  We, professing orthodoxy, are
+profligate hypocrites.  They, half heathens, half Arians, are honester
+men, purer men than we.  There is no use, he says, in despising the Goths
+as heretics, while they are better men than we.  They are better
+Christians than the Romans, because they are better men.  They pray to
+God for success, and trust in him, and we presumptuously trust in
+ourselves.  We swear by Christ: but what do we do but blaspheme him, when
+we swear 'Per Christum tollo eum,' 'I will make away with him,' 'Per
+Christum hunc jugulo,' 'I will cut his throat,' and then believe
+ourselves bound to commit the murder which we have vowed? . . . 'The
+Saxons,' he says, 'are fierce, the Franks faithless, the Gepidae inhuman,
+the Huns shameless.  But is the Frank's perfidy as blameable as ours?  Is
+the Alman's drunkenness, or the Alan's rapacity, as damnable as a
+Christian's?  If a Hun or a Gepid deceives you, what wonder?  He is
+utterly ignorant that there is any sin in falsehood.  But what of the
+Christian who does the same?  The Barbarians,' he says, 'are better men
+than the Christians.  The Goths,' he says, 'are perfidious, but chaste.
+The Alans unchaste, but less perfidious.  The Franks are liars, but
+hospitable; the Saxons ferociously cruel, but venerable for their
+chastity.  The Visigoths who conquered Spain,' he says, 'were the most
+"ignavi" (heavy, I presume he means, and loutish) of all the barbarians:
+but they were chaste, and therefore they conquered.'
+
+In Africa, if we are to believe Salvian, things stood even worse, at the
+time of the invasion of the Vandals.  In his violent invectives against
+the Africans, however, allowance must be made.  Salvian was a great lover
+of monks; and the Africans used, he says, to detest them, and mob them
+wherever they appeared; for which offence, of course, he can find no
+words too strong.  St. Augustine, however, himself a countryman of
+theirs, who died, happily, just before the storm burst on that hapless
+land, speaks bitterly of their exceeding profligacy--of which he himself
+in his wild youth, had had but too sad experience.  Salvian's assertion
+is, that the Africans were the most profligate of all the Romans; and
+that while each barbarian tribe had (as we have just seen) some good in
+them, the Africans had none.
+
+But there were noble souls left among them, lights which shone all the
+more brightly in the surrounding darkness.  In the pages of Victor
+Vitensis, which tell the sad story of the persecution of the African
+Catholics by the Arian Vandals, you will find many a moving tale which
+shews that God had his own, even among those degraded Carthaginians.
+
+The causes of the Arian hatred to the Catholics is very obscure.  You
+will find all that is known in Dean Milman's History of Latin
+Christianity.  A simple explanation may be found in the fact that the
+Catholics considered the Arians, and did not conceal their opinion, as
+all literally and actually doomed to the torments of everlasting fire;
+and that, as Gibbon puts it, 'The heroes of the north, who had submitted
+with some reluctance, to believe that all their ancestors were in hell,
+were astonished and exasperated to learn, that they themselves had only
+changed the mode of their eternal condemnation.'  The Teutons were
+(Salvian himself confesses it) trying to serve God devoutly, in chastity,
+sobriety, and honesty, according to their light.  And they were told by
+the profligates of Africa, that this and no less, was their doom.  It is
+not to be wondered at, again, if they mistook the Catholic creed for the
+cause of Catholic immorality.  That may account for the Vandal custom of
+re-baptizing the Catholics.  It certainly accounts for the fact (if after
+all it be a fact) which Victor states, that they tortured the nuns to
+extort from them shameful confessions against the priests.  But the
+history of the African persecution is the history of all persecutions, as
+confest again and again by the old fathers, as proved by the analogies of
+later times.  The sins of the Church draw down punishment, by making her
+enemies confound her doctrine and her practice.  But in return, the
+punishment of the Church purifies her, and brings out her nobleness
+afresh, as the snake casts his skin in pain, and comes out young and fair
+once more; and in every dark hour of the Church, there flashes out some
+bright form of human heroism, to be a beacon and a comfort to all future
+time.  Victor, for instance, tells the story of Dionysia, the beautiful
+widow whom the Vandals tried to torture into denying the Divinity of our
+Lord.--How when they saw that she was bolder and fairer than all the
+other matrons, they seized her, and went to strip her: and she cried to
+them, 'Qualiter libet occidite: verecunda tamen membra nolite nudare,'
+but in vain.  They hung her up by the hands, and scourged her till
+streams of blood ran down every limb.  Her only son, a delicate boy,
+stood by trembling, knowing that his turn would come next; and she saw
+it, and called to him in the midst of her shame and agony.  'He had been
+baptized into the name of the Blessed Trinity; let him die in that name,
+and not lose the wedding-garment.  Let him fear the pain that never ends,
+and cling to the life that endures for ever.'  The boy took heart, and
+when his turn came, died under the torture; and Dionysia took up the
+little corpse, and buried it in her own house; and worshipped upon her
+boy's grave to her dying day.
+
+Yes.  God had his own left, even among those fallen Africans of Carthage.
+
+But neither there, nor in Spain, could the Vandals cure the evil.  'Now-a-
+days,' says Salvian, 'there are no profligates among the Goths, save
+Romans; none among the Vandals, save Romans.  Blush, Roman people,
+everywhere, blush for your morals.  There is hardly a city free from dens
+of sin, and none at all from impurity, save those which the barbarians
+have begun to occupy.  And do we wonder if we are surpassed in power, by
+an enemy who surpasses us in decency?  It is not the natural strength of
+their bodies which makes them conquer us.  We have been conquered only by
+the vices of our own morals.'
+
+Yes.  Salvian was right.  Those last words were no mere outburst of
+national vanity, content to confess every sin, save that of being
+cowards.  He was right.  It was not the mere muscle of the Teuton which
+enabled him to crush the decrepit and debauched slave-nations, Gaul and
+Briton, Iberian and African, as the ox crushes the frogs of the marsh.
+The 'sera juvenum Venus, ideoque inexhausta pubertas,' had given him more
+than his lofty stature, and his mighty limbs.  Had he had nought but
+them, he might have remained to the end a blind Samson, grinding among
+the slaves in Caesar's mill, butchered to make a Roman holiday.  But it
+had given him more, that purity of his; it had given him, as it may give
+you, gentlemen, a calm and steady brain, and a free and loyal heart; the
+energy which springs from health; the self-respect which comes from self-
+restraint; and the spirit which shrinks from neither God nor man, and
+feels it light to die for wife and child, for people, and for Queen.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO LECTURE III.--ON DR. LATHAM'S 'GERMANIA.'
+
+
+If I have followed in these lectures the better known and more widely
+received etymology of the name Goth, I have done so out of no disrespect
+to Dr. Latham; but simply because his theory seems to me adhuc sub
+judice.  It is this, as far as I understand it.  That 'Goth' was not the
+aboriginal name of the race.  That they were probably not so called till
+they came into the land of the Getae, about the mouths of the Danube.
+That the Teutonic name for the Ostrogoths was Grutungs, and that of the
+Visigoths (which he does not consider to mean West-Goths) Thervings,
+Thuringer.  That on reaching the land of the Getae they took their name;
+'just as the Kentings of Anglo-Saxon England took name from the Keltic
+country of Kent;' and that the names Goth, Gothones, Gothini were
+originally given to Lithuanians by their Sclavonic neighbours.  I merely
+state the theory, and leave it for the judgment of others.
+
+The principal points which Dr. Latham considers himself to have
+established, are--
+
+That the area and population of the Teutonic tribes have been, on the
+authority of Tacitus, much overrated; many tribes hitherto supposed to be
+Teutonic being really Sclavonic, &c.
+
+This need not shock our pride, if proved--as it seems to me to be.  The
+nations who have influenced the world's destiny have not been great, in
+the modern American sense of 'big;' but great in heart, as our
+forefathers were.  The Greeks were but a handful at Salamis; so were the
+Romans of the Republic; so were the Spaniards of America; so, probably,
+were the Aztecs and Incas whom they overthrew; and surely our own
+conquerors and re-conquerers of Hindostan have shewn enough that it is
+not numbers, but soul, which gives a race the power to rule.
+
+Neither need we object to Dr. Latham's opinion, that more than one of the
+tribes which took part in the destruction of the Empire were not
+aboriginal Germans, but Sclavonians Germanized, and under German leaders.
+It may be so.  The custom of enslaving captives would render pure
+Teutonic blood among the lower classes of a tribe the exception and not
+the rule; while the custom of chiefs choosing the 'thegns,' 'gesitha,' or
+'comites,' who lived and died as their companions-in-arms, from among the
+most valiant of the unfree, would tend to produce a mixed blood in the
+upper classes also, and gradually assimilate the whole mass to the
+manners and laws of their Teutonic lords.  Only by some such actual
+superiority of the upper classes to the lower can I explain the deep
+respect for rank and blood, which distinguishes, and will perhaps always
+distinguish, the Teutonic peoples.  Had there even been anything like a
+primaeval equality among our race, a hereditary aristocracy could never
+have arisen, or if arising for a while, never could have remained as a
+fact which all believed in, from the lowest to the highest.  Just, or
+unjust, the institution represented, I verily believe, an ethnological
+fact.  The golden-haired hero said to his brown-haired bondsman, 'I am a
+gentleman, who have a "gens," a stamm, a pedigree, and know from whom I
+am sprung.  I am a Garding, an Amalung, a Scylding, an Osing, or what
+not.  I am a son of the gods.  The blood of the Asas is in my veins.  Do
+you not see it?  Am I not wiser, stronger, more virtuous, more beautiful
+than you?  You must obey me, and be my man, and follow me to the death.
+Then, if you prove a worthy thane, I will give you horse, weapons,
+bracelets, lands; and marry you, it may be, to my daughter or my niece.
+And if not, you must remain a son of the earth, grubbing in the dust of
+which you were made.'  And the bondsman believed him; and became his
+lord's man, and followed him to the death; and was thereby not degraded,
+but raised out of selfish savagery and brute independence into loyalty,
+usefulness, and self-respect.  As a fact, that is the method by which the
+thing was done: done;--very ill indeed, as most human things are done;
+but a method inevitable--and possibly right; till (as in England now) the
+lower classes became ethnologically identical with the upper, and
+equality became possible in law, simply because it existed in fact.
+
+But the part of Dr. Latham's 'Germania' to which I am bound to call most
+attention, because I have not followed it, is that interesting part of
+the Prolegomena, in which he combats the generally received theory, that,
+between the time of Tacitus and that of Charlemagne, vast masses of
+Germans had migrated southward from between the Elbe and the Vistula; and
+that they had been replaced by the Sclavonians who certainly were there
+in Charlemagne's days.
+
+Dr. Latham argues against this theory with a great variety of facts and
+reasons.  But has he not overstated his case on some points?
+
+Need the migrations necessary for this theory have been of 'unparalleled
+magnitude and rapidity'?
+
+As for the 'unparalleled completeness' on which he lays much stress, from
+the fact that no remnants of Teutonic population are found in the
+countries evacuated:
+
+Is it the fact that 'history only tells us of German armies having
+advanced south'?  Do we not find four famous cases--the irruption of the
+Cimbri and Teutons into Italy; the passage of the Danube by the
+Visigoths; and the invasions of Italy first by the Ostrogoths, then by
+the Lombards--in which the nations came with men, women, and children,
+horses, cattle, and dogs, bag and baggage?  May not this have been the
+custom of the race, with its strong feeling for the family tie; and may
+not this account for no traces of them being left behind?
+
+Does not Dr. Latham's theory proceed too much on an assumption that the
+Sclavonians dispossest the Teutons by force?  And is not this assumption
+his ground for objecting that the movement was effected improbably 'by
+that division of the European population (the Sclavonic and Lithuanian)
+which has, within the historic period, receded before the Germanic'?
+
+Are these migrations, though 'unrepresented in any history' (i.e.
+contemporaneous), really 'unrepresented in any tradition'?  Do not the
+traditions of Jornandes and Paulus Diaconus, that the Goths and the
+Lombards came from Scandinavia, represent this very fact?--and are they
+to be set aside as naught?  Surely not.  Myths of this kind generally
+embody a nucleus of truth, and must be regarded with respect; for they
+often, after all arguments about them are spent, are found to contain the
+very pith of the matter.
+
+Are the 'phenomena of replacement and substitution' so very strange--I
+will not say upon the popular theory, but at least on one half-way
+between it and Dr. Latham's?  Namely--
+
+That the Teutonic races came originally, as some of them say they did,
+from Scandinavia, Denmark, the South Baltic, &c.
+
+That they forced their way down, wave after wave, on what would have been
+the line of least resistance--the Marches between the Gauls, Romanized or
+otherwise, and the Sclavonians.  And that the Alps and the solid front of
+the Roman Empire turned them to the East, till their vanguard found
+itself on the Danube.
+
+This would agree with Dr. Latham's most valuable hint, that Markmen, 'Men
+of the Marches,' was perhaps the name of many German tribes successively.
+
+That they fought, as they went, with the Sclavonian and other tribes (as
+their traditions seem to report), and rolled them back to the eastward;
+and that as each Teutonic tribe past down the line, the Sclavonians
+rolled back again, till the last column was past.
+
+That the Teutons also carried down with them, as slaves or allies, a
+portion of this old Sclavonic population (to which Dr. Latham will
+perhaps agree); and that this fact caused a hiatus, which was gradually
+filled by tribes who after all were little better than nomad hunters, and
+would occupy (quite nominally) a very large tract with a small
+population.
+
+Would not this theory agree at once tolerably with the old traditions and
+with Dr. Latham's new facts?
+
+The question still remains--which is the question of all.  What put these
+Germanic peoples on going South?  Were there no causes sufficient to
+excite so desperate a resolve?
+
+(1)  Did they all go?  Is not Paulus Diaconus' story that one-third of
+the Lombards was to emigrate by lot, and two-thirds remain at home, a
+rough type of what generally happened--what happens now in our modern
+emigrations?  Was not the surplus population driven off by famine toward
+warmer and more hopeful climes?
+
+(2)  Are not the Teutonic populations of England, North Germany, and the
+Baltic, the descendants, much intermixed, and with dialects much changed,
+of the portions which were left behind?  This is the opinion, I believe,
+of several great ethnologists.  Is it not true?  If philological
+objections are raised to this, I ask (but in all humility), Did not these
+southward migrations commence long before the time of Tacitus?  If so,
+may they not have commenced before the different Teutonic dialects were
+as distinct as they were in the historic period?  And are we to suppose
+that the dialects did not alter during the long journeyings through many
+nations?  Is it possible that the Thervings and Grutungs could have
+retained the same tongue on the Danube, as their forefathers spoke in
+their native land?  Would not the Moeso-Gothic of Ulfilas have been all
+but unintelligible to the Goth who, upon the old theory, remained in
+Gothland of Sweden?
+
+(3)  But were there not more causes than mere want, which sent them
+south?  Had the peculiar restlessness of the race nothing to do with it?
+A restlessness not nomadic, but migratory: arising not from carelessness
+of land and home, but from the longing to found a home in a new land,
+like the restlessness of us, their children?  As soon as we meet them in
+historic times, they are always moving, migrating, invading.  Were they
+not doing the same in pre-historic times, by fits and starts, no doubt
+with periods of excitement, periods of collapse and rest?  When we
+recollect the invasion of the Normans; the wholesale eastward migration
+of the Crusaders, men, women, and children; and the later colonization by
+Teutonic peoples, of every quarter of the globe, is there anything
+wonderful in the belief that similar migratory manias may have seized the
+old tribes; that the spirit of Woden, 'the mover,' may have moved them,
+and forced them to go ahead, as now?  Doubtless the theory is strange.
+But the Teutons were and are a strange people; so strange, that they have
+conquered--one may almost say that they are--all nations which are alive
+upon the globe; and we may therefore expect them to have done strange
+things even in their infancy.
+
+The Romans saw them conquer the empire; and said, the good men among
+them, that it was on account of their superior virtue.  But beside the
+virtue which made them succeed, there must have been the adventurousness
+which made them attempt.  They were a people fond of 'avanturen,' like
+their descendants; and they went out to seek them; and found enough and
+to spare.
+
+(4)  But more, had they never heard of Rome?  Surely they had, and at a
+very early period of the empire.  We are apt to forget, that for every
+discovery of the Germans by the Romans, there was a similar discovery of
+the Romans by the Germans, and one which would tell powerfully on their
+childish imagination.  Did not one single Kemper or Teuton return from
+Marius' slaughter, to spread among the tribes (niddering though he may
+have been called for coming back alive) the fair land which they had
+found, fit for the gods of Valhalla; the land of sunshine, fruits and
+wine, wherein his brothers' and sisters' bones were bleaching unavenged?
+Did no gay Gaul of the Legion of the Lark, boast in a frontier wine-house
+to a German trapper, who came in to sell his peltry, how he himself was a
+gentleman now, and a civilized man, and a Roman; and how he had followed
+Julius Caesar, the king of men, over the Rubicon, and on to a city of the
+like of which man never dreamed, wherein was room for all the gods of
+heaven?  Did no captive tribune of Varus' legions, led with horrid shouts
+round Thor's altar in the Teutoburger Wald, ere his corpse was hung among
+the horses and goats on the primaeval oaks, turn to bay like a Roman, and
+tell his wild captors of the Eternal City, and of the might of that Caesar
+who would avenge every hair upon his head with a German life; and receive
+for answer a shout of laughter, and the cry--'You have come to us: and
+some day we will go to you?'  Did no commissary, bargaining with a German
+for cattle to be sent over the frontier by such a day of the week, and
+teaching him to mistranslate into those names of Thor, Woden, Freya, and
+so forth, which they now carry, the Jewish-Assyrian-Roman days of the
+se'nnight, amuse the simple forester by telling him how the streets of
+Rome were paved with gold, and no one had anything to do there but to eat
+and bathe at the public expense, and to go to the theatre, and see 20,000
+gladiators fight at once?  Did no German 'Regulus,' alderman, or king,
+enter Rome on an embassy, and come back with uplifted eyes and hands,
+declaring that he had seen things unspeakable--a 'very fine plunder,' as
+Blucher said of London; and that if it were not for the walls, they might
+get it all; for not only the ladies, but the noblemen, went about in
+litters of silver and gold, and wore gauze dresses, the shameless
+wretches, through which you might see every limb, so that as for killing
+them, there was no more fear of them than of a flock of sheep: but that
+he did not see as well as he could have wished how to enter the great
+city, for he was more or less the worse for liquor the whole time, with
+wondrous stuff which they called wine?  Or did no captive, escaped by
+miracle from the butcheries of the amphitheatre, return to tell his
+countrymen how all the rest had died like German men; and call on them to
+rise and avenge their brothers' blood?  Yes, surely the Teutons knew
+well, even in the time of Tacitus, of the 'micklegard,' the great city
+and all its glory.  Every fresh tribe who passed along the frontier of
+Gaul or of Noricum would hear more and more of it, see more and more men
+who had actually been there.  If the glory of the city exercised on its
+own inhabitants an intoxicating influence, as of a place omnipotent,
+superhuman, divine--it would exercise (exaggerated as it would be) a
+still stronger influence on the barbarians outside: and what wonder if
+they pressed southwards at first in the hope of taking the mighty city;
+and afterwards, as her real strength became more known, of at least
+seizing some of those colonial cities, which were as superhuman in their
+eyes as Rome itself would have been?  In the crusades, the children,
+whenever they came to a great town, asked their parents if that was not
+Jerusalem.  And so, it may be, many a gallant young Teuton, on entering
+for the first time such a city as Cologne, Lyons, or Vienna, whispered
+half trembling to his lord--'Surely this must be Rome.'
+
+Some such arguments as these might surely be brought in favour of a
+greater migration than Dr. Latham is inclined to allow: but I must leave
+the question for men of deeper research and wider learning, than I
+possess.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE III.--THE HUMAN DELUGE
+
+
+'I have taken in hand,' said Sir Francis Drake once to the crew of the
+immortal Pelican, 'that which I know not how to accomplish.  Yea, it hath
+even bereaved me of my wits to think of it.'
+
+And so I must say on the subject of this lecture.  I wish to give you
+some notion of the history of Italy for nearly one hundred years; say
+from 400 to 500.  But it is very difficult.  How can a man draw a picture
+of that which has no shape; or tell the order of absolute disorder?  It
+is all a horrible 'fourmillement des nations,' like the working of an ant-
+heap; like the insects devouring each other in a drop of water.  Teuton
+tribes, Sclavonic tribes, Tartar tribes, Roman generals, empresses,
+bishops, courtiers, adventurers, appear for a moment out of the crowd,
+dim phantoms--nothing more, most of them--with a name appended, and then
+vanish, proving their humanity only by leaving behind them one more stain
+of blood.
+
+And what became of the masses all the while? of the men, slaves the
+greater part of them, if not all, who tilled the soil, and ground the
+corn--for man must have eaten, then as now?  We have no hint.  One trusts
+that God had mercy on them, if not in this world, still in the world to
+come.  Man, at least, had none.
+
+Taking one's stand at Rome, and looking toward the north, what does one
+see for nearly one hundred years?  Wave after wave rising out of the
+north, the land of night, and wonder, and the terrible unknown; visible
+only as the light of Roman civilization strikes their crests, and they
+dash against the Alps, and roll over through the mountain passes, into
+the fertile plains below.  Then at last they are seen but too well; and
+you discover that the waves are living men, women, and children, horses,
+dogs, and cattle, all rushing headlong into that great whirlpool of
+Italy: and yet the gulf is never full.  The earth drinks up the blood;
+the bones decay into the fruitful soil; the very names and memories of
+whole tribes are washed away.  And the result of an immigration which may
+be counted by hundreds of thousands is this--that all the land is waste.
+
+The best authorities which I can give you (though you will find many more
+in Gibbon) are--for the main story, Jornandes, De Rebus Geticis.  Himself
+a Goth, he wrote the history of his race, and that of Attila and his
+Huns, in good rugged Latin, not without force and sense.
+
+Then Claudian, the poet, a bombastic panegyrist of contemporary Roman
+scoundrels; but full of curious facts, if one could only depend on them.
+
+Then the earlier books of Procopius De Bello Gothico, and the Chronicle
+of Zosimus.
+
+Salvian, Ennodius and Sidonius Apollinaris, as Christians, will give you
+curious details, especially as to South France and North Italy; while
+many particulars of the first sack of Rome, with comments thereon which
+express the highest intellects of that day, you will find in St. Jerome's
+Letters, and St. Augustine's City of God.
+
+But if you want these dreadful times _explained_ to you, I do not think
+you can do better than to take your Bibles, and to read the Revelations
+of St. John the Apostle.  I shall quote them, more than once, in this
+lecture.  I cannot help quoting them.  The words come naturally to my
+lips, as fitter to the facts than any words of my own.
+
+I do not come here to interpret the Book of Revelations.  I do not
+understand that book.  But I do say plainly, though I cannot interpret
+the book, that the book has interpreted those times to me.  Its awful
+metaphors give me more living and accurate pictures of what went on than
+any that Gibbon's faithful details can give.
+
+You may see, if you have spiritual eyes wherewith to see, the Dragon, the
+serpent, symbol of political craft and the devilish wisdom of the Roman,
+giving authority to the Beast, the symbol of brute power; to mongrel
+AEtiuses and Bonifaces, barbarian Stilichos, Ricimers and Aspars, and a
+host of similar adventurers, whose only strength was force.
+
+You may see the world wondering after the beast, and worshipping brute
+force, as the only thing left to believe in.
+
+You may see the nations of the world gnawing their tongues for pain, and
+blaspheming God, but not repenting of their deeds.
+
+You may see the faith and patience of the saints--men like Augustine,
+Salvian, Epiphanius, Severinus, Deogratias of Carthage, and a host more,
+no doubt, whose names the world will never hear--the salt of the earth,
+which kept it all from rotting.
+
+You may see Babylon the great fallen, and all the kings and merchants of
+the earth bewailing her afar off, and watching the smoke of her torment.
+
+You may see, as St. John warns you, that--after her fall, mind--if men
+would go on worshipping the beast, and much more his image--the phantom
+and shadow of brute force, after the reality had passed away--they should
+drink of the wine of the wrath of God, and be tormented for ever.  For
+you may see how those degenerate Romans did go on worshipping the shadow
+of brute force, and how they were tormented for ever; and had no rest day
+or night, because they worshipped the Beast and his image.
+
+You may see all the fowl of the heavens flocking together to the feast of
+the great God, to eat the flesh of kings and captains, horse and rider,
+bond and free.--All carrion-birds, human as well as brute--All greedy
+villains and adventurers, the scoundreldom of the whole world, flocking
+in to get their share of the carcass of the dying empire; as the vulture
+and the raven flock in to the carrion when the royal eagles have gorged
+their fill.
+
+And lastly, you may see, if God give you grace, One who is faithful and
+true, with a name which no man knew, save Himself, making war in
+righteousness against all evil; bringing order out of disorder, hope out
+of despair, fresh health and life out of old disease and death; executing
+just judgment among all the nations of the earth; and sending down from
+heaven the city of God, in the light of which the nations of those who
+are saved should walk, and the kings of the earth should bring their
+power and their glory into it; with the tree of life in the midst of it,
+whose leaves should be for the healing of the nations.
+
+Again, I say, I am not here to interpret the Book of Revelations; but
+this I say, that that book interprets those times to me.
+
+Leaving, for the present at least, to better historians than myself the
+general subject of the Teutonic immigrations; the conquest of North Gaul
+by the Franks, of Britain by the Saxons and Angles, of Burgundy by the
+Burgundians, of Africa by the Vandals, I shall speak rather of those
+Teutonic tribes which actually entered and conquered Italy; and first, of
+course, of the Goths.  Especially interesting to us English should their
+fortunes be, for they are said to be very near of kin to us; at least to
+those Jutes who conquered Kent.  As Goths, Geats, Getae, Juts,
+antiquarians find them in early and altogether mythic times, in the
+Scandinavian peninsula, and the isles and mainland of Denmark.
+
+Their name, it is said, is the same as one name for the Supreme Being.
+Goth, Guth, Yuth, signifies war.  'God' is the highest warrior, the Lord
+of hosts, and the progenitor of the race, whether as an 'Eponym hero' or
+as the supreme Deity.  Physical force was their rude notion of Divine
+power, and Tiu, Tiv, or Tyr, in like manner, who was originally the god
+of the clear sky, the Zeus or Jove of the Greeks and Romans, became by
+virtue of his warlike character, identical with the Roman Mars, till the
+dies Martis of the Roman week became the German Tuesday.
+
+Working their way down from Gothland and Jutland, we know not why nor
+when, thrusting aside the cognate Burgunds, and the Sclavonic tribes whom
+they met on the road, they had spread themselves, in the third century,
+over the whole South of Russia, and westward over the Danubian Provinces,
+and Hungary.  The Ostrogoths (East-goths) lay from the Volga to the
+Borysthenes, the Visigoths (West-goths?) from the Borysthenes to the
+Theiss.  Behind them lay the Gepidae, a German tribe, who had come south-
+eastward with them, and whose name is said to signify the men who had
+'bided' (remained) behind the rest.
+
+What manner of men they were it is hard to say, so few details are left
+to us.  But we may conceive them as a tall, fair-haired people, clothed
+in shirts and smocks of embroidered linen, and gaiters cross-strapped
+with hide; their arms and necks encircled with gold and silver rings; the
+warriors, at least of the upper class, well horsed, and armed with lance
+and heavy sword, with chain-mail, and helmets surmounted with plumes,
+horns, towers, dragons, boars, and the other strange devices which are
+still seen on the crests of German nobles.  This much we can guess; for
+in this way their ancestors, or at least relations, the War-Geats, appear
+clothed in the grand old song of Beowulf.  Their land must have been
+tilled principally by slaves, usually captives taken in war: but the
+noble mystery of the forge, where arms and ornaments were made, was an
+honourable craft for men of rank; and their ladies, as in the middle age,
+prided themselves on their skill with the needle and the loom.  Their
+language has been happily preserved to us in Ulfilas' Translation of the
+Scriptures.  For these Goths, the greater number of them at least, were
+by this time Christians, or very nearly such.  Good Bishop Ulfilas,
+brought up a Christian and consecrated by order of Constantine the Great,
+had been labouring for years to convert his adopted countrymen from the
+worship of Thor and Woden.  He had translated the Bible for them, and had
+constructed a Gothic alphabet for that purpose.  He had omitted, however
+(prudently as he considered) the books of Kings, with their histories of
+the Jewish wars.  The Goths, he held, were only too fond of fighting
+already, and 'needed in that matter the bit, rather than the spur.'  He
+had now a large number of converts, some of whom had even endured
+persecution from their heathen brethren.  Athanaric, 'judge,' or alderman
+of the Thervings, had sent through the camp--so runs the story--the
+waggon which bore the idol of Woden, and had burnt, with their tents and
+their families, those who refused to worship.
+
+They, like all other German tribes, were ruled over by two royal races,
+sons of Woden and the Asas.  The Ostrogoth race was the Amalungs--the
+'heavenly,' or 'spotless' race; the Visigoth race was the Balthungs--the
+'bold' or 'valiant' race; and from these two families, and from a few
+others, but all believed to be lineally descended from Woden, and now
+much intermixed, are derived all the old royal families of Europe, that
+of the House of Brunswick among the rest.
+
+That they were no savages, is shewn sufficiently by their names, at least
+those of their chiefs.  Such names as Alaric, 'all rich' or 'all
+powerful,' Ataulf, 'the helping father,' Fridigern, 'the willing peace-
+maker,' and so forth--all the names in fact, which can be put back into
+their native form out of their Romanized distortions, are tokens of a
+people far removed from that barbarous state in which men are named after
+personal peculiarities, natural objects, or the beasts of the field.  On
+this subject you may consult, as full of interest and instruction, the
+list of Teutonic names given in Muratori.
+
+They had broken over the Roman frontier more than once, and taken cities.
+They had compelled the Emperor Gratian to buy them off.  They had built
+themselves flat-bottomed boats without iron in them and sailed from the
+Crimea round the shores of the Black Sea, once and again, plundering
+Trebizond, and at last the temple itself of Diana at Ephesus.  They had
+even penetrated into Greece and Athens, plundered the Parthenon, and
+threatened the capitol.  They had fought the Emperor Decius, till he, and
+many of his legionaries, were drowned in a bog in the moment of victory.
+They had been driven with difficulty back across the Danube by Aurelian,
+and walled out of the Empire with the Allemanni by Probus's
+'Teufels-Mauer,' stretching from the Danube to the Rhine.  Their time was
+not yet come by a hundred years.  But they had seen and tasted the fine
+things of the sunny south, and did not forget them amid the steppes and
+snows.
+
+At last a sore need came upon them.  About 350 there was a great king
+among them, Ermanaric, 'the powerful warrior,' comparable, says
+Jornandes, to Alexander himself, who had conquered all the conquered
+tribes around.  When he was past 100 years old, a chief of the Roxolani
+(Ugrians, according to Dr. Latham; men of Ros, or Russia), one of these
+tribes, plotted against him, and sent for help to the new people, the
+Huns, who had just appeared on the confines of Europe and Asia.  Old
+Ermanaric tore the traitor's wife to pieces with wild horses: but the
+Huns came nevertheless.  A magic hind, the Goths said, guided the new
+people over the steppes to the land of the Goths, and then vanished.  They
+fought with the Goths, and defeated them.  Old Ermanaric stabbed himself
+for shame, and the hearts of the Goths became as water before the tempest
+of nations.  They were supernatural creatures, the Goths believed,
+engendered of witches and demons on the steppes; pig-eyed hideous beings,
+with cakes instead of faces, 'offam magis quam faciem,' under ratskin
+caps, armed with arrows tipped with bone, and lassos of cord, eating,
+marketing, sleeping on horseback, so grown into the saddle that they
+could hardly walk in their huge boots.  With them were Acatzirs, painted
+blue, hair as well as skin; Alans, wandering with their waggons like the
+Huns, armed with heavy cuirasses of plaited horn, their horses decked
+with human scalps; Geloni armed with a scythe, wrapt in a cloak of human
+skin; Bulgars who impaled their prisoners--savages innumerable as the
+locust swarms.  Who could stand against them?
+
+In the year 375, the West Goths came down to the Danube-bank and
+entreated the Romans to let them cross.  There was a Christian party
+among them, persecuted by the heathens, and hoping for protection from
+Rome.  Athanaric had vowed never to set foot on Roman soil, and after
+defending himself against the Huns, retired into the forests of
+'Caucaland.'  Good Bishop Ulfilas and his converts looked longingly
+toward the Christian Empire.  Surely the Christians would receive them as
+brothers, welcome them, help them.  The simple German fancied a Roman
+even such a one as themselves.
+
+Ulfilas went on embassy to Antioch, to Valens the Emperor.  Valens, low-
+born, cruel, and covetous, was an Arian, and could not lose the
+opportunity of making converts.  He sent theologians to meet Ulfilas, and
+torment him into Arianism.  When he arrived, Valens tormented him
+himself.  While the Goths starved he argued, apostasy was the absolute
+condition of his help, till Ulfilas, in a weak moment, gave his word that
+the Goths should become Arians, if Valens would give them lands on the
+South bank of the Danube.  Then they would be the Emperor's men, and
+guard the marches against all foes.  From that time Arianism became the
+creed, not only of the Goths, but of the Vandals, the Sueves, and almost
+all the Teutonic tribes.
+
+It was (if the story be true) a sinful and foolish compact, forced from a
+good man by the sight of his countrymen's extreme danger and misery.  It
+avenged itself, soon enough, upon both Goths and Romans.
+
+To the Goths themselves the change must have seemed not only unimportant,
+but imperceptible.  Unaccustomed to that accuracy of thought, which is
+too often sneered at by Gibbon as 'metaphysical subtlety,' all of which
+they would have been aware was the change of a few letters in a creed
+written in an unknown tongue.  They could not know, (Ulfilas himself
+could not have known, only two years after the death of St. Athanasius at
+Alexandria; while the Nicaean Creed was as yet received by only half of
+the Empire; and while he meanwhile had been toiling for years in the
+Danubian wilds, ignorant perhaps of the controversy which had meanwhile
+convulsed the Church)--neither the Goths nor he, I say, could have known
+that the Arianism, which they embraced, was really the last, and as it
+were apologetic, refuge of dying Polytheism; that it, and not the
+Catholic Faith, denied the abysmal unity of the Godhead; that by making
+the Son inferior to the Father, as touching his Godhead, it invented two
+Gods, a greater and a lesser, thus denying the absoluteness, the
+infinity, the illimitability, by any category of quantity, of that One
+Eternal, of whom it is written, that God is a Spirit.  Still less could
+they have guessed that when Arius, the handsome popular preacher (whose
+very name, perhaps, Ulfilas never heard) asked the fine ladies of
+Alexandria--'Had you a son before that son was born?'--'No.'  'Then God
+could have no son before that son was begotten, &c.'--that he was
+mingling up the idea of Time with the idea of that Eternal God who
+created Time, and debasing to the accidents of before and after that
+Timeless and Eternal Generation, of which it is written, 'Thou art my
+Son, this day have I begotten thee.'  Still less could Ulfilas, or his
+Goths, have known, that the natural human tendency to condition God by
+Time, would be, in later ages, even long after Arianism was crushed
+utterly, the parent of many a cruel, gross, and stupid superstition.  To
+them it would have been a mere question whether Woden, the All-father,
+was superior to one of his sons, the Asas: and the Catholic faith
+probably seemed to them an impious assumption of equality, on the part of
+one of those Asas, with Woden himself.
+
+Of the battle between Arianism and Orthodoxy I have said enough to shew
+you that I think it an internecine battle between truth and falsehood.
+But it has been long ago judged by wager of battle: by the success of
+that duel of time, of which we must believe (as our forefathers believed
+of all fair duels) that God defends the right.
+
+So the Goths were to come over the Danube stream: but they must give up
+their arms, and deliver their children (those of rank, one supposes), as
+hostages, to be educated by the Romans, as Romans.
+
+They crossed the fatal river; they were whole days in crossing; those set
+to count them gave it up in despair; Ammianus says: 'He who wishes to
+know their number,'
+
+      'Libyci velit aequoris idem
+   Discere quam multae Zephyro volvuntur arenae.'
+
+And when they were across, they gave up the children.  They had not the
+heart to give up the beloved weapons.  The Roman commissioners let them
+keep the arms, at the price of many a Gothic woman's honour.  Ugly and
+foul things happened, of which we have only hints.  Then they had to be
+fed for the time being, till they could cultivate their land.  Lupicinus
+and Maximus, the two governors of Thrace pocketed the funds which Valens
+sent, and starved the Goths.  The markets were full of carrion and dogs'
+flesh.  Anything was good enough for a barbarian.  Their fringed carpets,
+their beautiful linens, all went.  A little wholesome meat cost 10 pounds
+of silver.  When all was gone, they had to sell their children.  To
+establish a slave-trade in the beautiful boys and girls was just what the
+wicked Romans wanted.
+
+At last the end came.  They began to rise.  Fridigern, their king, kept
+them quiet till the time was ripe for revenge.  The Romans, trying to
+keep the West Goths down, got so confused, it seems, that they let the
+whole nation of the East Goths (of whom we shall hear more hereafter)
+dash across the Danube, and establish themselves in the north of the
+present Turkey, to the east of the West Goths.
+
+Then at Marcianopolis, the capital of Lower Moesia, Lupicinus asked
+Fridigern and his chiefs to a feast.  The starving Goths outside were
+refused supplies from the market, and came to blows with the guards.
+Lupicinus, half drunk, heard of it, and gave orders for a massacre.
+Fridigern escaped from the palace, sword in hand.  The smouldering embers
+burst into flame, the war-cry was raised, and the villain Lupicinus fled
+for his life.
+
+Then began war south of the Danube.  The Roman legions were defeated by
+the Goths, who armed themselves with the weapons of the dead.  Moesia was
+overrun with fire and sword.  Adrianople was attacked, but in vain.  The
+slaves in the gold mines were freed from their misery, and shewed the
+Goths the mountain-passes and the stores of grain.  As they went on, the
+Goths recovered their children.  The poor things told horrid tales; and
+the Goths, maddened, avenged themselves on the Romans of every age and
+sex.  'They left,' says St. Jerome, 'nothing alive--not even the beasts
+of the field; till nothing was left but growing brambles and thick
+forests.'
+
+Valens, the Emperor, was at Antioch.  Now he hurried to Constantinople,
+but too late.  The East Goths had joined the West Goths; and hordes of
+Huns, Alans, and Taifalae (detestable savages, of whom we know nothing
+but evil) had joined Fridigern's confederacy.
+
+Gratian, Valens' colleague and nephew, son of Valentinian the bear-ward,
+had just won a great victory over the Allemanni at Colmar in Alsace; and
+Valens was jealous of his glory.  He is said to have been a virtuous
+youth, whose monomania was shooting.  He fell in love with the wild
+Alans, in spite of their horse-trappings of scalps, simply because of
+their skill in archery; formed a body-guard of them, and passed his time
+hunting with them round Paris.  Nevertheless, he won this great victory
+by the help, it seems, of one Count Ricimer ('ever-powerful'), Count of
+the Domestics, whose name proclaims him a German.
+
+Valens was jealous of Gratian's fame; he was stung by the reproaches of
+the mob of Constantinople; and he undervalued the Goths, on account of
+some successes of his lieutenants, who had recovered much of the plunder
+taken by them, and had utterly overpowered the foul Taifalae,
+transporting them to lands about Modena and Parma in Italy.  He rejected
+Count Ricimer's advice to wait till Gratian reinforced him with the
+victorious western legions, and determined to give battle a few miles
+from Adrianople.  Had he waited for Gratian, the history of the whole
+world might have been different.
+
+For on the ninth of August, A.D. 378, the fatal day, the second Cannae,
+from which Rome never recovered as from that first, the young world and
+the old world met, and fought it out; and the young world won.  The light
+Roman cavalry fled before the long lances and heavy swords of the German
+knights.  The knights turned on the infantry, broke them, hunted them
+down by charge after charge, and left the footmen to finish the work.
+
+Two-thirds of the Roman army were destroyed; four Counts of the Empire;
+generals and officers without number.  Valens fled wounded to a cottage.
+The Goths set it on fire, and burned him and his staff therein, ignorant
+that they had in their hands the Emperor of Rome.  Verily there is a God
+who judgeth the earth.
+
+So thought the Catholics of that day, who saw in the fearful death of
+Valens a punishment for his having forced the Goths to become Arians.  'It
+was just,' says one, 'that he should burn on earth, by whose counsels so
+many barbarians will burn in hell for ever.'  There are (as I have shewn)
+still darker counts in the conduct of the Romans toward the Goths; enough
+(if we believe our Bibles) to draw down on the guilty the swift and
+terrible judgments of God.
+
+At least, this was the second Cannae, the death-wound of Rome.  From that
+day the end was certain, however slow.  The Teuton had at last tried his
+strength against the Roman.  The wild forest-child had found himself
+suddenly at death-grips with the Enchanter whom he had feared, and almost
+worshipped, for so long; and behold, to his own wonder, he was no more a
+child, but grown into a man, and the stronger, if not the cunninger of
+the two.  There had been a spell upon him; the 'Romani nominis umbra.'
+But from that day the spell was broken.  He had faced a Roman Emperor, a
+Divus Caesar, the man-god by whose head all nations swore, rich with the
+magic wealth, wise with the magic cunning, of centuries of superhuman
+glory; and he had killed him, and behold he died, like other men.  That
+he had done.  What was there left for him now that he could not do?
+
+The stronger he was, but not yet the cunninger of the two.  The Goths
+could do no more.  They had to leave Adrianople behind them, with the
+Emperor's treasures safe within its walls; to gaze with childish wonder
+at the Bosphorus and its palaces; to recoil in awe from the 'long walls'
+of Constantinople, and the great stones which the engines thereon hurled
+at them by 'arsmetricke and nigromancy,' as their descendants believed of
+the Roman mechanicians, even five hundred years after; to hear (without
+being able to avenge) the horrible news, that the Gothic lads distributed
+throughout Asia, to be educated as Romans, had been decoyed into the
+cities by promises of lands and honours, and then massacred in cold
+blood; and then to settle down, leaving their children unavenged, for
+twenty years on the rich land which we now call Turkey in Europe, waiting
+till the time was come.
+
+Waiting, I say, till the time was come.  The fixed idea that Rome, if not
+Constantinople, could be taken at last, probably never left the minds of
+the leading Goths after the battle of Adrianople.  The altered policy of
+the Caesars was enough of itself to keep that idea alive.  So far from
+expelling them from the country which they had seized, the new Emperor
+began to flatter and to honour them.
+
+They had been heretofore regarded as savages, either to be driven back by
+main force, or tempted to enlist in the Roman ranks.  Theodosius regarded
+them as a nation, and one which it was his interest to hire, to trust, to
+indulge at the expense of his Roman subjects.
+
+Theodosius has received the surname of Great--seemingly by comparison;
+'Inter caecos luscus rex;' and it was highly creditable to a Roman
+Emperor in those days to be neither ruffian nor villain, but a handsome,
+highbred, courteous gentleman, pure in his domestic life, an orthodox
+Christian, and sufficiently obedient to the Church to forgive the monks
+who had burnt a Jewish synagogue, and to do penance in the Cathedral of
+Milan for the massacre of Thessalonica.  That the morals of the Empire
+(if Zosimus is to be at all believed) grew more and more effeminate,
+corrupt, reckless; that the soldiers (if Vegetius is to be believed)
+actually laid aside, by royal permission, their helmets and cuirasses, as
+too heavy for their degenerate bodies; that the Roman heavy infantry,
+which had conquered the world, ceased to exist, while its place was taken
+by that Teutonic heavy cavalry, which decided every battle in Europe till
+the English yeoman, at Crecy and Poictiers, turned again the balance of
+arms in favour of the men who fought on foot; that the Goths became the
+'foederati' or allies of the Empire, paid to fight its battles against
+Maximus the Spaniard, and Arbogast the Frank, the rebels who, after the
+murder of young Gratian, attempted to set up a separate empire in the
+west; that Stilicho the Vandal was the Emperor's trusted friend, and
+master of the horse; that Alaric the Balth, and other noble Goths, were
+learning to combine with their native courage those Roman tactics which
+they only needed to become masters of the world; that in all cities, even
+in the Royal Palace, the huge Goth swaggered in Roman costume, his neck
+and arms heavy with golden torcs and bracelets; or even (as in the case
+of Fravitta and Priulf) stabbed his enemy with impunity at the imperial
+table; that [Greek text], to disturb the Goths, was a deadly offence
+throughout the Empire: all these things did not prevent a thousand new
+statues from rising in honour of the great Caesar, and excited nothing
+more than grumblings of impotent jealousy from a people whose maxim had
+become, 'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.'
+
+Three anecdotes will illustrate sufficiently the policy of Theodosius
+toward his inconvenient guests.  Towards the beginning of his reign, when
+the Goths, after the death of the great Fridigern, were broken up, and
+quarreling among themselves, he tempted a royal Amal, Modar by name, by
+the title of Master-General, to attack and slaughter in their sleep a
+rival tribe of Goths, and carry off an immense spoil to the imperial
+camp.  To destroy the German by the German was so old a method of the
+Roman policy, that it was not considered derogatory to the 'greatness' of
+Theodosius.
+
+The old Athanaric, the Therving--he who had sworn never to set foot on
+Roman soil, and had burnt them who would not fall down and worship before
+Woden's waggon, came over the Danube, out of the forests of 'Caucaland,'
+and put himself at the head of the Goths.  The great Caesar trembled
+before the heathen hero; and they made peace together; and old Athanaric
+went to him at Constantinople, and they became as friends.  And the
+Romani nominis umbra, the glamour of the Roman name, fell on the old man,
+too feeble now to fight; and as he looked, says Jornandes, on the site of
+the city, and on the fleets of ships, and the world-famous walls, and the
+people from all the nations upon earth, he said, 'Now I behold what I
+have often heard tell, and never believed.  The Kaiser is a God on earth,
+and he who shall lift his hand against him, is guilty of his own blood.'
+The old hero died in Constantinople, and the really good-natured Emperor
+gave him a grand funeral, and a statue, and so delighted the simple
+Goths, that the whole nation entered his service bodily, and became the
+Emperor's men.
+
+The famous massacre of Thessalonica, and the penance of Theodosius,
+immortalized by the pencil of Vandyke, is another significant example of
+the relation between Goth and Roman.  One Botheric (a Vandal or other
+Teuton by his name) was military commandant of that important post.  He
+put in prison a popular charioteer of the circus, for a crime for which
+the Teutonic language had to borrow a foreign name, and which the
+Teutons, like ourselves, punished with death, though it was committed
+with impunity in any Roman city.  At the public games, the base mob
+clamoured, but in vain, for the release of their favourite; and not
+getting him, rose on Botheric, murdered him and his officers, and dragged
+their corpses through the streets.
+
+This was indeed [Greek text]; and Theodosius, partly in honest
+indignation, partly perhaps in fear of the consequences, issued orders
+from Milan which seem to have amounted to a permission to the Goths to
+avenge themselves.  The populace were invited as usual to the games of
+the circus, and crowded in, forgetful of their crime, heedless of danger,
+absorbed in the one greed of frivolous, if not sinful pleasure.  The
+Gothic troops concealed around entered, and then began a 'murder grim and
+great.'  For three hours it lasted.  Every age and sex, innocent or
+guilty, native or foreigner, to the number of at least 7,000, perished,
+or are said to have perished; and the soul of Botheric had 'good company
+on its way to Valhalla.'
+
+The Goths, doubtless, considered that they were performing an act of
+public justice upon villains: but the Bishops of the Church looked at the
+matter in another light.  The circumstances of treachery, the confusion
+of the innocent with the guilty, the want of any judicial examination and
+sentence, aroused their sense of humanity and justice.  The offence was
+aggravated by the thought that the victims were Roman and orthodox, the
+murderers barbarians and Arians; St. Ambrose, with a noble courage,
+stopped the Emperor at the door of the Basilica of Milan, and forbad him
+to enter, till he had atoned for the fatal order by public penance.  The
+Caesar submitted nobly to the noble demand; and the repentance of
+Theodosius is the last scene in the downward career of the Caesars, which
+can call forth a feeling of admiration and respect.
+
+In January 395 Theodosius died; and after him came the deluge.
+
+The Empire was parted between his two worthless sons.  Honorius had the
+west, Arcadius the east; while the real master of the Empire was Stilicho
+the Vandal, whose virtues and valour and mighty stature are sung (and not
+undeservedly) in the pompous verses of Claudian.  Of the confusion which
+ensued; of the murder (well-deserved) of Rufinus, the infamous minister
+whose devout hypocrisy had so long cajoled Theodosius; of the revolt and
+atrocities of Gildo in Africa, you must read in the pages of Gibbon.
+These lectures confine themselves, at present, to the history of the
+Goths.
+
+In January 395, I said, Theodosius died.  Before the end of the winter
+the Goths were in arms, with Alaric the Balth at their head.  They had
+been refused, at least for the time, the payment of their usual subsidy.
+He had been refused the command of the Roman armies.  Any excuse was
+sufficient.  The fruit was ripe for plucking.  The wrongs of centuries
+were to be avenged.  Other tribes crost the Danube on the ice, and joined
+the Goths; and the mighty host swept down through Greece, passing
+Thermopylae unopposed, ransoming Athens (where Alaric enjoyed a Greek
+bath and a public banquet, and tried to behave for a day like a Roman
+gentleman); sacking Corinth, Argos, Sparta, and all the cities and
+villages far and wide, and carrying off plunder inestimable, and troops
+of captive women.
+
+Stilicho threw himself into the Peloponnese at Corinth to cut off the
+Goths, and after heavy fighting, Alaric, who seems to have been a really
+great general, out-manoeuvred him, crost the Gulf of Corinth at Rhium,
+with all his plunder and captives, and got safe away into northern
+Greece.
+
+There Arcadius, the terrified Emperor of the East, punished him for
+having devastated Greece, by appointing him Master-General of the very
+country which he had ravaged.  The end was coming very near.  The Goths
+lifted him on the shield, and proclaimed him King of the West Goths; and
+there he staid, somewhere about the head of the Adriatic, poised like an
+eagle in mid-air, watching Rome on one side, and Byzant on the other,
+uncertain on which quarry he should swoop.
+
+He made up his mind for Rome.  He would be the man to do the deed at
+last.  There was a saga in which he trusted.  Claudian gives it in an
+hexameter,
+
+   'Alpibus Italiae ruptis penetrabis ad urbem.'
+
+Yes, he would take The City, and avenge the treachery of Valens, and all
+the wrongs which Teutons had endured from the Romans for now four
+centuries.  And he did it.
+
+But not the first time.  He swept over the Alps.  Honorius fled to Asta,
+and Alaric besieged him there.  The faithful Stilicho came to the rescue;
+and Alaric was driven to extremities.  His warriors counselled him to
+retreat.  No, he would take Rome, or die.  But at Pollentia, Stilicho
+surprised him, while he and his Goths were celebrating Easter Sunday, and
+a fearful battle followed.  The Romans stormed his camp, recovered the
+spoils of Greece, and took his wife, decked in the jewels in which she
+meant to enter Rome.  One longs to know what became of her.
+
+At least, so say the Romans: the Goths tell a very different story; and
+one suspects that Pollentia may be one more of those splendid paper
+victories, in which the Teutons were utterly exterminated, only to rise
+out of the ground, seemingly stronger and more numerous than ever.  At
+least, instead of turning his head to the Alps, he went on toward Rome.
+Stilicho dared not fight him again, and bought him off.  He turned
+northward toward Gaul, and at Verona Stilicho got him at an advantage,
+and fought him once more, and if we are to believe Rosino and Claudian,
+beat him again.  'Taceo de Alarico, saepe victo, saepe concluso,
+semperque dimisso.'  'It is ill work trapping an eagle,' says some one.
+When you have caught him, the safest thing very often is to let him go
+again.
+
+Meanwhile poured down into Italy, as far as Florence (a merely
+unimportant episode in those fearful days), another wave of German
+invaders under one Radogast, 200,000 strong.  Under the walls of Florence
+they sat down, and perished of wine, and heat, and dysentery.  Like water
+they flowed in, and like water they sank into the soil: and every one of
+them a human soul.
+
+Stilicho and Honorius went to Rome, and celebrated their triumph over the
+Goths, with (for the last time in history) gladiatorial sports.  Three
+years past, and then Stilicho was duly rewarded for having saved Rome, in
+the approved method for every great barbarian who was fool enough to help
+the treacherous Roman; namely, by being murdered.
+
+Alaric rose instantly, and with him all the Gothic tribes.  Down through
+Italy he past, almost without striking a blow.  Ravenna, infamous,
+according to Sidonius, for its profligacy, where the Emperor's court was,
+he past disdainfully, and sat down before the walls of Rome.  He did not
+try to storm it.  Probably he could not.  He had no such machines, as
+those with which the Romans battered walls.  Quietly he sat, he and his
+Goths, 'as wolves wait round the dying buffalo;' waiting for the Romans
+within to starve and die.  They did starve and die; men murdered each
+other for food; mothers ate their own babes; but they sent out embassies,
+boasting of their strength and numbers.  Alaric laughed,--'The thicker
+the hay, the easier it is mowed.'  What terms would he take?  'All your
+gold, all your silver, the best of your precious things.  All your
+barbarian slaves.'  That last is significant.  He would deliver his own
+flesh and blood.  The Teuton man should be free.  The trolls should drag
+no more of the forest children into their accursed den.  'What then will
+you leave us?'  'Your lives.'
+
+They bought him off with a quaint ransom: 5000 pounds weight of gold,
+30,000 of silver, 4000 robes of silk, 3000 pieces of scarlet cloth, and
+3000 lbs. of pepper, possibly spices of all kinds.  Gold, and finery, and
+spices--gifts fit for children, such as those Goths were.
+
+But he got, too, 40,000 Teuton slaves safe out of the evil place, and
+embodied them into his army.  He had now 100,000 fighting men.  Why did
+he not set up as king of Italy?  Was it that the awe of the place, the
+prestige of the Roman name, cowed him?  It cowed each of the Teutonic
+invaders successively.  To make themselves emperors of Rome was a thing
+of which they dared not dream.  Be that as it may, all he asked was, to
+be received as some sort of vassal of the Emperor.  The
+Master-Generalship of Italy, subsidies for his army, an independent
+command in the Tyrolese country, whence he had come, were his demand.
+
+Overblown with self-conceit, the Romans refused him.  They would listen
+to no conditions.  They were in a thoroughly Chinese temper.  You will
+find the Byzantine empire in the same temper centuries after; blinded to
+present weakness by the traditions of their forefathers' strength.  They
+had worshipped the beast.  Now that only his image was left, they
+worshipped that.
+
+Alaric seized Ostia, and cut off their supplies.  They tried to appease
+him by dethroning Honorius, and setting up some puppet Attalus.  Alaric
+found him plotting; or said that he had done so; and degraded him
+publicly at Rimini before his whole army.  Again he offered peace.  The
+insane Romans proclaimed that his guilt precluded him for ever from the
+clemency of the Empire.
+
+Then came the end.  He marched on Rome.  The Salarian gate was thrown
+open at midnight, probably by German slaves within; and then, for five
+dreadful days and nights, the wicked city expiated in agony the sins of
+centuries.
+
+And so at last the Nibelungen hoard was won.
+
+'And the kings of the earth who had lived delicately with her, and the
+merchants of the earth who were made rich by her, bewailed her, standing
+afar off for the fear of her torment, and crying, Alas! alas, that great
+Babylon! for in one hour is thy judgment come.'
+
+St. John passes in those words from the region of symbol to that of
+literal description.  A great horror fell upon all nations, when the news
+came.  Rome taken?  Surely the end of all things was at hand.  The
+wretched fugitives poured into Egypt and Syria--especially to Jerusalem;
+perhaps with some superstitious hope that Christ's tomb, or even Christ
+himself, might save them.
+
+St. Jerome, as he saw day by day patrician men and women who had passed
+their lives in luxury, begging their bread around his hermitage at
+Bethlehem, wrote of the fall of Rome as a man astonied.
+
+St. Augustine, at Hippo, could only look on it as the end of all human
+power and glory, perhaps of the earth itself.  Babylon the great had
+fallen, and now Christ was coming in the clouds of heaven to set up the
+city of God for ever.  In that thought he wrote his De Civitate Dei.  Read
+it, gentlemen--especially you who are to be priests--not merely for its
+details of the fall of Rome, but as the noblest theodicy which has yet
+proceeded from a human pen.
+
+Followed by long trains of captives, long trains of waggons bearing the
+spoils of all the world, Alaric went on South, 'with the native instinct
+of the barbarian,' as Dr. Sheppard well says.  Always toward the sun.
+Away from Muspelheim and the dark cold north, toward the sun, and
+Valhalla, where Odin and the Asas dwell in everlasting light.
+
+He tried to cross into Sicily: but a storm wrecked his boats, and the
+Goths were afraid of the sea.  And after a while he died.  And the wild
+men made a great mourning over him.  They had now no plan left; no heart
+to go south, and look for Odin over the sea.  But of one thing they were
+resolved, that the base Romans should not dig up Alaric out of his barrow
+and scatter his bones to the winds.
+
+So they put no barrow over the great king; but under the walls of Cosenza
+they turned the river-bed, and in that river-bed they set Alaric, armed
+and mailed, upright upon his horse, with gold, and jewels, and arms, and
+it may be captive youths and maids, that he might enter into Valhalla in
+royal pomp, and make a worthy show among the heroes in Odin's hall.  And
+then they turned back the river into its bed, and slew the slaves who had
+done the work, that no man might know where Alaric lies: and no man does
+know till this day.
+
+As I said, they had no plan left now.  Two years they stayed in Campania,
+basking in the villas and gardens, drinking their fill of the wine; and
+then flowed away northward again, no one knows why.  They had no wish to
+settle, as they might have done.  They followed some God-given instinct,
+undiscoverable now by us.  Ataulf, Alaric's kinsman, married Placidia,
+the Emperor's beautiful young sister, and accepted from him some sort of
+commission to fight against his enemies in Gaul.  So to the south of Gaul
+they went, and then into Spain, crushing before them Alans, Sueves, and
+Vandals, and quarrelling among themselves.  Ataulf was murdered, and all
+his children; Placidia put to shame.  Then she had her revenge.  To me it
+is not so much horrible as pitiful.  They had got the Nibelungen hoard;
+and with it the Nibelungen curse.
+
+A hundred years afterwards, when the Franks pillaged the Gothic palace of
+Narbonne, they found the remnants of it.  Things inestimable,
+indescribable; tables of solid emerald; the Missorium, a dish 2500 lbs.
+weight, covered with all the gems of India.  They had been in Solomon's
+Temple, fancied the simple Franks--as indeed some of them may well have
+been.  The Arabs got the great emerald table at last, with its three rows
+of great pearls.  Where are they all now?  What is become, gentlemen, of
+the treasures of Rome?  Jewels, recollect, are all but indestructible;
+recollect, too, that vast quantities were buried from time to time, and
+their places forgotten.  Perhaps future generations will discover many
+such hoards.  Meanwhile, many of those same jewels must be in actual use
+even now.  Many a gem which hangs now on an English lady's wrist saw
+Alaric sack Rome--and saw before and since--What not?  The palaces of the
+Pharaohs, or of Darius; then the pomp of the Ptolemies, or of the
+Seleucids--came into Europe on the neck of some vulgar drunken wife of a
+Roman proconsul, to glitter for a few centuries at every gladiator's
+butchery in the amphitheatre; then went away with Placidia on a Gothic ox-
+waggon, to pass into an Arab seraglio at Seville; and then, perhaps, back
+from Sultan to Sultan again to its native India, to figure in the peacock-
+throne of the Great Mogul, and be bought at last by some Armenian for a
+few rupees from an English soldier, and come hither--and whither next?
+When England shall be what Alexandria and Rome are now, that little stone
+will be as bright as ever.--An awful symbol, if you will take it so, of
+the permanence of God's works and God's laws, amid the wild chance and
+change of sinful man.
+
+Then followed for Rome years of peace,--such peace as the wicked make for
+themselves--A troubled sea, casting up mire and dirt.  Wicked women,
+wicked counts (mayors of the palace, one may call them) like Aetius and
+Boniface, the real rulers of a nominal Empire.
+
+Puppet Valentinian succeeded his father, puppet Honorius.  In his days
+appeared another great portent--another comet, sweeping down out of
+infinite space, and back into infinite space again.--Attila and his Huns.
+They lay in innumerable hordes upon the Danube, until Honoria,
+Valentinian's sister, confined in a convent at Constantinople for some
+profligacy, sent her ring to Attila.  He must be her champion, and
+deliver her.  He paused a while, like Alaric before him, doubting whether
+to dash on Constantinople or Rome, and at last decided for Rome.  But he
+would try Gaul first; and into Gaul he poured, with all his Tartar
+hordes, and with them all the Teuton tribes, who had gathered in his
+progress, as an avalanche gathers the snow in its course.  At the great
+battle of Chalons, in the year 451, he fought it out: Hun, Sclav, Tartar,
+and Finn, backed by Teutonic Gepid and Herule, Turkling, East Goth and
+Lombard, against Roman and West Goth, Frank and Burgund, and the Bretons
+of Armorica.  Wicked Aetius shewed himself that day, as always, a general
+and a hero--the Marlborough of his time--and conquered.  Attila and his
+hordes rolled away eastward, and into Italy for Rome.
+
+That is the Hunnenschlacht; 'a battle,' as Jornandes calls it, 'atrox,
+multiplex, immane, pertinax.'  Antiquity, he says, tells of nothing like
+it.  No man who had lost that sight could say that he had seen aught
+worth seeing.--A fight gigantic, supernatural in vastness and horror, and
+the legends which still hang about the place.  You may see one of them in
+Von Kaulbach's immortal design--the ghosts of the Huns and the ghosts of
+the Germans rising from their graves on the battle-night in every year,
+to fight it over again in the clouds, while the country far and wide
+trembles at their ghostly hurrah.  No wonder men remember that
+Hunnenschlacht.  Many consider that it saved Europe; that it was one of
+the decisive battles of the world.
+
+Not that Attila was ruined.  Within the year he had swept through
+Germany, crossed the Alps, and devastated Italy almost to the walls of
+Rome.  And there the great Pope Leo, 'the Cicero of preaching, the Homer
+of theology, the Aristotle of true philosophy,' met the wild heathen: and
+a sacred horror fell upon Attila, and he turned, and went his way, to die
+a year or two after no man knows how.  Over and above his innumerable
+wives, he took a beautiful German girl.  When his people came in the
+morning, the girl sat weeping, or seeming to weep; but Etzel, the scourge
+of God, lay dead in a pool of gore.  She said that he had burst a blood-
+vessel.  The Teutons whispered among themselves, that like a free-born
+Teuton, she had slain her tyrant.  One longs to know what became of her.
+
+And then the hordes broke up.  Ardarich raised the Teuton Gepids and
+Ostrogoths.  The Teutons who had obeyed Attila, turned on their Tartar
+conquerors, the only people who had ever subdued German men, and then
+only by brute force of overpowering numbers.  At Netad, upon the great
+plain between the Drave and the Danube, they fought the second
+Hunnenschlacht, and the Germans conquered.  Thirty thousand Huns fell on
+that dreadful day, and the rest streamed away into the heart of Asia,
+into the infinite unknown deserts from whence the foul miscreants had
+streamed forth, and left the Teutons masters of the world.  The battle of
+Netad; that, and not Chalons, to my mind, was the saving battle of
+Europe.
+
+So Rome was saved; but only for a few years.  Puppet Valentinian rewarded
+Aetius for saving Rome, by stabbing with his own hand in his own palace,
+the hero of Chalons; and then went on to fill up the cup of his iniquity.
+It is all more like some horrible romance than sober history.  Neglecting
+his own wife Eudoxia, he took it into his wicked head to ravish her
+intimate friend, the wife of a senator.  Maximus stabbed him, retaliated
+on the beautiful empress, and made himself Emperor.  She sent across the
+seas to Africa, to Genseric the Vandal, the cruel tyrant and persecutor.
+He must come and be her champion, as Attila had been Honoria's.  And he
+came, with Vandals, Moors, naked Ausurians from the Atlas.  The wretched
+Romans, in their terror, tore Maximus in pieces; but it was too late.
+Eudoxia met Genseric at the gates in royal robes and jewels.  He stript
+her of her jewels on the spot, and sacked Rome; and that was her reward.
+
+This is the second sack.  More dreadful far than the first--455 is its
+date.  Then it was that the statues, whose fragments are still found,
+were hurled in vain on the barbarian assailants.  Not merely gold and
+jewels, but the art-treasures of Rome were carried off to the Vandal
+fleet, and with them the golden table and the seven-branched candlestick
+which Titus took from the Temple of Jerusalem.
+
+How had these things escaped the Goths forty years before?  We cannot
+tell.  Perhaps the Gothic sack, which only lasted five days, was less
+complete than this one, which went on for fourteen days of unutterable
+horrors.  The plunderers were not this time sturdy honest Goths; not even
+German slaves, mad to revenge themselves on their masters: they were
+Moors, Ausurian black savages, and all the pirates and cut-throats of the
+Mediterranean.
+
+Sixty thousand prisoners were carried off to Carthage.  All the statues
+were wrecked on the voyage to Africa, and lost for ever.
+
+And yet Rome did not die.  She lingered on; her Emperor still calling
+himself an Emperor, her senate a senate; feeding her lazy plebs, as best
+she could, with the remnant of those revenues which former Emperors had
+set aside for their support--their public bread, public pork, public oil,
+public wine, public baths,--and leaving them to gamble and quarrel, and
+listen to the lawyers in rags and rascality, and to rise and murder ruler
+after ruler, benefactor after benefactor, out of base jealousy and fear
+of any one less base than themselves.  And so 'the smoke of her torment
+went up continually.'
+
+But if Rome would not die, still less would she repent; as it is
+written--'The remnant of the people repented not of their deeds, but
+gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven.'
+
+As the century runs on, the confusion becomes more and more dreadful.
+Anthemius, Olybrius, Orestes, and the other half-caste Romans with Greek
+names who become quasi-emperors and get murdered; Ricimer the Sueve, the
+king-maker and king-murderer; even good Majorian, who as puppet Emperor
+set up by Ricimer, tries to pass a few respectable laws, and is only
+murdered all the sooner.  None of these need detain us.  They mean
+nothing, they represent no idea, they are simply kites and crows
+quarrelling over the carcase, and cannot possibly teach us anything, but
+the terrible lesson, that in all revolutions the worst men are certain to
+rise to the top.
+
+But only for a while, gentlemen, only for a while.  Villany is by its
+very essence self-destructive, and if rogues have their day, the time
+comes when rogues fall out, and honest men come by their own.
+
+That day, however, was not come for wretched Rome.  A third time she was
+sacked by Ricimer her own general; and then more villains ruled her; and
+more kites and crows plundered her.  The last of them only need keep us a
+while.  He is Odoacer, the giant Herule, Houd-y-wacker, as some say his
+name really is, a soubriquet perhaps from his war-cry, 'Hold ye stoutly,'
+'Stand you steady.'  His father was AEdecon, Attila's secretary, chief of
+the little Turkling tribe, who, though Teutonic, had clung faithfully to
+Attila's sons, and after the battle of Netad, came to ruin.  There are
+strange stories of Odoacer.  One from the Lives of St. Severinus, how
+Odoacer and his brothers started over the Alps, knapsacks at back, to
+seek their fortunes in Italy, and take service with the Romans; and how
+they came to St. Severinus' cell near Vienna, and went in, heathens as
+they probably were, to get a blessing from the holy hermit; and how
+Odoacer had to stoop, and stand stooping, so huge he was.  And how the
+saint saw that he was no common lad, and said, 'Go into Italy, clothed in
+thy ragged sheep-skins: thou shalt soon give greater gifts to thy
+friends.'  So he went, and his brother with him.  One of them at least
+ought to interest us.  He was Onulf, Hunwulf, Wulf, Guelph, the Wolf-cub,
+who went away to Constantinople, and saw strange things, and did strange
+things likewise, and at last got back to Germany, and settled in Bavaria,
+and became the ancestor of all the Guelphs, and of Victoria, queen of
+England.  His son, Wulfgang, fought under Belisarius against the Goths;
+his son again, Ulgang, under Belisarius against Persian and Lombard; his
+son or grandson was Queen Brunhilda's confidant in France, and became
+Duke of Burgundy; and after that the fortunes of his family were mixed up
+with the Merovingian kings of France, and then again with the Lombards in
+Italy, till one of them emerges as Guelf, count of Altorf, the ancestor
+of our Guelphic line.
+
+But to return to Odoacer.  He came to Rome, seeking his fortune.  There
+he found in power Orestes, his father's old colleague at Attila's court,
+the most unprincipled turn-coat of his day; who had been the Emperor's
+man, then Attila's man, and would be anybody's man if needed: but who was
+now his own man, being king-maker for the time being, and father of the
+puppet Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, a pretty little lad, with an ominous
+name.
+
+Odoacer took service under Orestes in the bodyguards, became a great
+warrior and popular; watched his time; and when Orestes refused the
+mercenaries, Herules, Rugians, Scyrings, Turklings and Alans--all the
+weak or half-caste frontier tribes who had as yet little or no share in
+the spoils of Italy--their demand of the third of the lands of Italy, he
+betrayed his benefactor; promised the mercenaries to do for them what
+Orestes would not, and raises his famous band of confederates.  At last
+he called himself King of Nations, burnt Pavia, and murdered Orestes, as
+a due reward for his benefits.  Stript of his purple, the last Emperor of
+Rome knelt crying at the feet of the German giant, and begged not to be
+murdered like his father.  And the great wild beast's hard heart smote
+him, and he sent the poor little lad away, to live in wealth and peace in
+Lucullus' villa at Misenum, with plenty of money, and women, and gewgaws,
+to dream away his foolish life looking out over the fair bay of
+Naples--the last Emperor of Rome.
+
+Then Odoacer set to work, and not altogether ill.  He gave his
+confederates the third of Italy, in fief under himself as king, and for
+fourteen years (not without the help of a few more murders) he kept some
+sort of rude order and justice in the wretched land.  Remember him, for,
+bad man as he is, he does represent a principle.  He initiated, by that
+gift of the lands to his soldiers, the feudal system in Italy.  I do not
+mean that he invented it.  It seems rather to be a primaeval German form,
+as old as the days of Tacitus, who describes, if you will recollect, the
+German war-kings as parting the conquered lands among their 'comites,'
+thanes, or companions in arms.
+
+So we leave Odoacer king of Italy, for fourteen years, little dreaming,
+perhaps, of the day when as he had done unto others so should it be done
+to him.  But for that tale of just and terrible retribution you must wait
+till the next lecture.
+
+And now, to refresh us with a gleam of wholesome humanity after all these
+horrors, let us turn to our worthy West Goth cousins for a while.  They
+have stopt cutting each other's throats, settled themselves in North
+Spain and South France, and good bishop Sidonius gets to like them.  They
+are just and honest men on the whole, kindly, and respectable in morals,
+living according to their strange old Gothic Law.  But above all Sidonius
+likes their king--Theodoric is his name.  A man of blood he has been in
+his youth: but he has settled down, like his people; and here is a
+picture of him.  A real photograph of a live old Goth, nearly 1400 years
+ago.  Gibbon gives a good translation of it.  I will give you one, but
+Sidonius is prolix and florid, and I have had to condense.
+
+A middle-sized, stout man, of great breadth of chest, and thickness of
+limb, a large hand, and a small foot, curly haired, bushy eye-browed,
+with remarkably large eyes and eyelids, hook-nosed, thin-lipped;
+brilliant, cheerful, impassioned, full of health and strength in mind and
+body.  He goes to chapel before day-light, sits till eight doing justice,
+while the crowd, let into a latticed enclosure, is admitted one by one
+behind a curtain into the presence.  At eight he leaves the throne, and
+goes either to count his money, or look at his horses.  If he hunts, he
+thinks it undignified to carry his bow, and womanish to keep it strung, a
+boy carries it behind him; and when game gets up, he asks you (or the
+Bishop, who seems to have gone hunting with him) what you would wish him
+to aim at; strings his bow, and then (says Sidonius) never misses his
+shot.  He dines at noon, quietly in general, magnificently on Saturdays;
+drinks very little, and instead of sleeping after dinner, plays at tables
+and dice.  He is passionately fond of his game, but never loses his
+temper, joking and talking to the dice, and to every one round him,
+throwing aside royal severity, and bidding all be merry (says the
+bishop); for, to speak my mind, what he is afraid of is, that people
+should be afraid of him.  If he wins he is in immense good humour; then
+is the time to ask favours of him; and, says the crafty bishop, many a
+time have I lost the game, and won my cause thereby.  At three begins
+again the toil of state.  The knockers return, and those who shove them
+away return too; everywhere the litigious crowd murmurs round; and
+follows him at evening, when he goes to supper, or gets its matters
+settled by the officers of the court, who have to stay there till bed-
+time.  At supper, though there are but rarely 'mimici sales,' which I
+cannot translate--some sort of jesting: but biting and cruel insults
+(common at the feasts of the Roman Emperors) are never allowed.  His
+taste in music is severe.  No water-organs, flute-player, lyrist, cymbal
+or harp-playing woman is allowed.  All he delights in is the old Teutonic
+music, whose virtue (says the bishop) soothes the soul no less than does
+its sound the ear.  When he rises from table the guards for the night are
+set, and armed men stand at all the doors, to watch him through the first
+hours of sleep.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IV.--THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER
+
+
+Let us follow the fortunes of Italy and of Rome.  They are not only a
+type of the fortunes of the whole western world, but the fortunes of that
+world, as you will see, depend on Rome.
+
+You must recollect, meanwhile, that by the middle of the fifth century,
+the Western Empire had ceased to exist.  The Angles and Saxons were
+fighting their way into Britain.  The Franks were settled in north France
+and the lower Rhineland.  South of them, the centre of Gaul still
+remained Roman, governed by Counts of cities, who were all but
+independent sovereigns, while they confessed a nominal allegiance to the
+Emperor of Constantinople.  Their power was destined soon to be
+annihilated by the conquests of Clovis and his Franks--as false and cruel
+ruffians as their sainted king, the first-born son of the Church.  The
+history of Gaul for some centuries becomes henceforth a tissue of
+internecine horrors, which you must read for yourselves in the pages of
+M. Sismondi, or of Gregory of Tours.  The Allemanni (whose name has
+become among the Franks the general name for Germans) held the lands from
+the Maine to the Rhaetian Alps.  The Burgunds, the lands to the south-
+west of them, comprising the greater part of south-east Gaul.  The West
+Goths held the south-west of Gaul, and the greater part of Spain, having
+thrust the Sueves, and with them some Alans, into Gallicia, Asturias, and
+Portugal; and thrust, also, the Vandals across the straits of Gibraltar,
+to found a prosperous kingdom along the northern shore of Africa.  The
+East Goths, meanwhile, after various wanderings to the north of the Alps,
+lay in the present Austria and in the Danube lands, resting after their
+great struggle with the Huns, and their crowning victory of Netad.
+
+To follow the fortunes of Italy, we must follow those of these East
+Goths, and especially of one man among them, Theodoric, known in German
+song as Dietrich of Bern or Verona.
+
+Interesting exceedingly to us should this great hero be.  No man's
+history better shows the strange relations between the Teutons and the
+dying Empire: but more; his life is the first instance of a Teuton
+attempting to found a civilized and ordered state, upon experience drawn
+from Roman sources; of the young world trying to build itself up some
+sort of dwelling out of the ruins of the old.  Dietrich failed, it is
+true.  But if the thing had been then possible, he seems to have been the
+man to have done it.  He lived and laboured like what he was--a royal
+Amal, a true son of Woden.  Unable to write, he founded a great kingdom
+by native virtue and common sense.  Called a barbarian, he restored
+prosperity to ruined Italy, and gave to it (and with it to the greater
+part of the western world), peace for three and thirty years.  Brought up
+among hostile sects, he laid down that golden law of religious liberty
+which the nineteenth century has not yet courage and humanity enough to
+accept.  But if his life was heroic, his death was tragic.  He failed
+after all in his vast endeavours, from causes hidden from him, but
+visible, and most instructive, to us; and after having toiled impartially
+for the good of conquerors and of conquered alike, he died sadly, leaving
+behind him a people who, most of them, believed gladly the news that a
+holy hermit had seen his soul hurled down the crater of Stromboli, as a
+just punishment for the inexpiable crime of being wiser than his
+generation.
+
+Some have complained of Gibbon's 'hero-worship' of Dietrich--I do not.
+The honest and accurate cynic so very seldom worshipped a hero, or
+believed in the existence of any, that we may take his good opinion as
+almost final and without appeal.  One author, for whose opinion I have
+already exprest a very high respect, says that he was but a wild man of
+the woods to the last; polished over skin-deep with Roman civilization;
+'Scratch him, and you found the barbarian underneath {101}.'  It may be
+true.  If it be true, it is a very high compliment.  It was not from his
+Roman civilization, but from his 'barbarian' mother and father, that he
+drew the 'vive intelligence des choses morales, et ces inspirations
+elevees et heroiques,' which M. Thierry truly attributes to him.  If
+there was, as M. Thierry truly says, another nature struggling within
+him--is there not such in every man?  And are not the struggles the more
+painful, the temptations more dangerous, the inconsistencies too often
+the more shameful, the capacities for evil as well as for good, more
+huge, just in proportion to the native force and massiveness of the soul?
+The doctrine may seem dangerous.  It is dangerous, like many truths; and
+woe to those who, being unlearned and unstable, wrest it to their own
+destruction; and presume upon it to indulge their own passions under
+Byronic excuses of 'genius,' or 'muscular Christianity.'  But it is true
+nevertheless: so at least the Bible tells us, in its wonderful
+delineations of David, 'the man after God's own heart,' and of St. Peter,
+the chief of the apostles.  And there are points of likeness between the
+character of Dietrich, and that of David, which will surely suggest
+themselves to any acute student of human nature.  M. Thierry attributes
+to him, as his worse self, 'les instincts les plus violents; la cruaute,
+l'astuce, l'egoisme impitoyable.'  The two first counts are undeniable--at
+least during his youth: they were the common vices of the age.  The two
+latter I must hold as not proven by facts: but were they proven, they
+would still be excusable, on the simple ground of his Greek education.
+'Cunning and pitiless egotism' were the only moral qualities which
+Dietrich is likely to have seen exercised at the court of Constantinople:
+and what wonder, if he was somewhat demoralized by the abominable
+atmosphere which he breathed from childhood?  Dietrich is an illustration
+of the saga with which these lectures began.  He is the very type of the
+forest child, bewitched by the fine things of the wicked Troll garden.
+The key to the man's character, indeed the very glory of it, is the long
+struggle within him, between the Teutonic and the Greek elements.  Dazzled
+and debauched, at times, by the sinful glories of the Bosphorus, its
+palaces, its gold, and its women, he will break the spell desperately.  He
+will become a wild Goth and an honest man once more; he will revenge his
+own degradation on that court and empire which he knows well enough to
+despise, distrust and hate.  Again and again the spell comes over him.
+His vanity and his passions make him once more a courtier among the
+Greeks; but the blood of Odin is strong within him still; again and again
+he rises, with a noble shame, to virtue and patriotism, trampling under
+foot selfish luxury and glory, till the victory is complete; and he turns
+away in the very moment of the greatest temptation, from the bewitching
+city, to wander, fight, starve, and at last conquer a new land for
+himself and for his nation; and shew, by thirty years of justice and
+wisdom, what that true Dietrich was, which had been so long overlaid by
+the false Dietrich of his sinful youth.
+
+Look at the facts of his history, as they stand, and see whether they do
+not bear out this, and no other, theory of his character.
+
+The year was 455, two years after Attila's death.  Near Vienna a boy was
+born, of Theodemir one of the Gothic kings and his favourite Erleva.  He
+was sent when eight years old to Constantinople as a hostage.  The
+Emperor Leo had agreed to pay the Goths 300 pounds of gold every year, if
+they would but leave him in peace; and young Dietrich was the pledge of
+the compact.  There he grew up amid all the wisdom of the Romans,
+watching it all, and yet never even learning to write.  It seems to some
+that the German did not care to learn; it seems to me rather that they
+did not care to teach.  He came back to his people at eighteen, delighted
+them by his strength and stature, and became, to all appearance, a Goth
+of the Goths; going adventures with six thousand volunteers against the
+Sarmatae, who had just defeated the Greeks, and taken a city--which he
+retook, but instead of restoring it to the Emperor, kept himself.  Food
+becoming scarce in Austria, the Ostrogoths moved some into Italy, some
+down on Illyria and Thessaly; and the Emperor gracefully presented them
+with the country of which they had already taken possession.
+
+In every case, you see, this method went on.  The failing Emperors bought
+off the Teutons where they could; submitted to them where they could not;
+and readily enough turned on them when they had a chance.  The relations
+between the two parties can be hardly better explained, than by comparing
+them to those between the English adventurers in Hindostan and the
+falling Rajahs and Sultans of the last century.
+
+After a while Theodoric, or Dietrich, found himself, at his father's
+death, sole king of the Ostrogoths.  This period of his life is very
+obscure: but one hint at least we have, which may explain his whole
+future career.  Side by side with him and with his father before him,
+there was another Dietrich--Dietrich the One-eyed, son of Triar, a low-
+born adventurer, who had got together the remnants of some low-caste
+tribes, who were called the Goths of Thrace, and was swaggering about the
+court of Constantinople, as, when the East Goths first met him, what we
+call Warden of the Marches, with some annual pay for his Goths.  He was
+insolent to Theodemir and his family, and they retaliated by bitter
+hatred.  It was intolerable for them, Amals, sons of Odin, to be insulted
+by this upstart.  So they went on for years, till the miserable religious
+squabble fell out--you may read it in Gibbon--which ended in the Emperor
+Zeno, a low-born and cunning man, suspected of the murder of his own son
+by the princess Ariadne, being driven out of Constantinople by
+Basiliscus.  We need not enter into such matters, except as far as they
+bear on the history of Dietrich the Amal.  Dietrich the One-eyed helped
+Basiliscus--and then Zeno seems to have sent for Dietrich the Amal to
+help him.  He came, but too late.  Basiliscus' party had already broken
+up; Basiliscus and his family had taken refuge in a church, from whence
+Zeno enticed him, on the promise of shedding no blood, which he did not:
+but instead, put him, his wife and children, in a dry cistern, walled it
+up and left them.
+
+Dietrich the Amal rose into power and great glory, and became 'son-in-
+arms' to the Emperor.  But the young Amal longed for adventures.  He
+offered to take his Ostrogoths into Italy, drive out Odoacer, and seat on
+the throne of the West, Nepos, one of the many puppets who had been
+hurled off it a few years before.  Zeno had need of the young hero nearer
+home, and persuaded him to stay in Constantinople, eat, drink, and be
+merry.
+
+Whereon Odoacer made Romulus Agustulus and the Roman Senate write to Zeno
+that they wanted no Emperor save him at Constantinople; that they were
+very happy under the excellent Odoacer, and that they therefore sent to
+Zeno, as the rightful owner, all the Imperial insignia and ornaments;
+things which may have been worn, some of them, by Augustus himself.  And
+so ended, even in name, the Empire of Rome.  All which the Amal saw, and,
+as will appear, did not forget.
+
+Zeno gave the Amal all that the One-eyed had had before him, and paid the
+Ostrogoths yearly as he had paid the One-eye's men.  The One-eyed was
+banished to his cantonments, and of course revolted.  Zeno wanted to buy
+him off, but the Amal would not hear of it; he would not help the Romans
+against his rival, unless they swore perpetual enmity against him.
+
+They did so, and he marched to the assistance of the wretched Empire.  He
+was to be met by Roman reinforcements at the Haemus.  They never came;
+and the Amal, disgusted and disheartened, found himself entangled in the
+defiles of the Haemus, starving and worn out; with the One-eyed
+entrenched on an inaccessible rock, where he dared not attack him.
+
+Then followed an extraordinary scene.  The One-eyed came down again and
+again from his rock, and rode round the Amal's camp, shouting to him
+words so true, that one must believe them to have been really spoken.
+
+'Perjured boy, madman, betrayer of your race--do you not see that the
+Roman plan is as always to destroy Goths by Goths?  Whichever of us
+falls, they, not we, will be the stronger.  They never met you as they
+promised, at the cities, nor here.  They have sent you out here to perish
+in the desert.'
+
+Then the East Goths raised a cry.  'The One-eyed is right.  The Amal
+cares not that these men are Goths like ourselves.'
+
+Then the One-eyed appeals to the Goths themselves, as he curses the Amal.
+
+'Why are you killing your kinsmen?  Why have you made so many widows?
+Where is all their wealth gone, they who set out to fight for you?  Each
+of them had two or three horses: but now they are walking on foot behind
+you like slaves,--free-men as well-born as yourself:--and you promised to
+measure them out gold by the bushel.'
+
+Was it not true?  If young Dietrich had in him (and he shewed that he had
+in after years) a Teuton's heart, may not that strange interview have
+opened his eyes to his own folly, and taught him that the Teuton must be
+his own master, and not the mercenary of the Romans?
+
+The men cried out that it was true.  He must make peace with the
+One-eyed, or they would do it themselves; and peace was made.  They both
+sent ambassadors to Zeno; the Amal complaining of treachery; the One-eyed
+demanding indemnity for all his losses.  The Emperor was furious.  He
+tried to buy off the Amal by marrying him to a princess of the blood
+royal, and making him a Caesar.  Dietrich would not consent; he felt that
+it was a snare.  Zeno proclaimed the One-eyed an enemy to the Empire; and
+ended by reinstating him in his old honours, and taking them from the
+Amal.  The Amal became furious, burnt villages, slaughtered the peasants,
+even (the Greeks say) cut off the hands of his captives.  He had broken
+with the Romans at last.  The Roman was astride of him, and of all
+Teutons, like Sindbad's old man of the sea.  The only question, as with
+Sindbad, was whether he should get drunk, and give them a chance of
+throwing the perfidious tyrant.  And now the time was come.  He was
+compelled to ask himself, not--what shall I be in relation to myself: but
+what shall I be in relation to the Kaiser of the Romans--a mercenary, a
+slave, or a conqueror--for one of the three I must be?
+
+So it went on, year after year--sometimes with terrible reverses for
+Dietrich, till the year 480.  Then the old One-eyed died, in a strange
+way.  Mounting a wild horse at the tent-door, the beast reared before he
+could get his seat; afraid of pulling it over by the curb, he let it go.
+A lance, in Gothic fashion, was hanging at the tent-door, and the horse
+plunged the One-eyed against it.  The point went deep into his side, and
+the old fighting man was at rest for ever.
+
+And then came a strange peripeteia for the Amal.  Zeno, we know not why,
+sent instantly for him.  He had been ravaging, pursuing, defeating Roman
+troops, or being defeated by them.  Now he must come to Rome.  His Goths
+should have the Lower Danube.  He should have glory and honour to spare.
+He came.  His ideal, at this time, seems actually to have been to live
+like a Roman citizen in Constantinople, and help to govern the Empire.
+Recollect, he was still little more than five and twenty years old.
+
+So he went to Constantinople, and I suppose with him the faithful mother,
+and faithful sister, who had been with him in all his wanderings.  He had
+a triumph decreed him at the Emperor's expense, was made Consul
+Ordinarius ('which,' saith Jornandes, 'is accounted the highest good and
+chief glory in the world') and Master-general, and lodged in the palace.
+
+What did it all mean?  Dietrich was dazzled by it, at least for a while.
+What it meant, he found out too soon.  He was to fight the Emperor's
+battles against all rebels, and he fought them, to return irritated,
+complaining (justly or unjustly) of plots against his life; to be
+pacified, like a child, with the honour of an equestrian statue; then to
+sink down into Byzantine luxury for seven inglorious years, with only one
+flashing out of the ancient spirit, when he demanded to go alone against
+the Bulgars, and killed their king with his own hand.
+
+What woke him from his dream?  The cry of his starving people.
+
+The Goths, settled on the lower Danube, had been living, as wild men and
+mercenaries live, recklessly from hand to mouth, drinking and gambling
+till their families were in want.  They send to the Amal.  'While thou
+art revelling at Roman banquets, we are starving--come back ere we are
+ruined.'
+
+They were jealous, too, of the success of Odoacer and his mercenaries.  He
+was growing now to be a great power; styling himself 'King of nations
+{109},' giving away to the Visigoths the Narbonnaise, the last remnant of
+the Western Empire; collecting round him learned Romans like Symmachus,
+Boethius, and Cassiodorus; respecting the Catholic clergy; and seemingly
+doing his best to govern well.  His mercenaries, however, would not be
+governed.  Under their violence and oppression agriculture and population
+were both failing; till Pope Gelasius speaks of 'AEmilia, Tuscia,
+ceteraeque provinciae in quibus nullus prope hominum existit.'
+
+Meanwhile there seems to have been a deep hatred on the part of the Goths
+to Odoacer and his mercenaries.  Dr. Sheppard thinks that they despised
+him himself as a man of low birth.  But his father AEdecon had been chief
+of the Turklings, and was most probably of royal blood.  It is very
+unlikely, indeed, that so large a number of Teutons would have followed
+any man who had not Odin's blood in his veins.  Was there a stain on
+Odoacer from his early connexion with Attila?  Or was the hatred against
+his men more than himself, contempt especially of the low-caste
+Herules,--a question of race, springing out of those miserable
+tribe-feuds, which kept the Teutons always divided and weak?  Be that as
+it may, Odoacer had done a deed which raised this hatred to open fury.  He
+had gone over the Alps into Rugiland (then Noricum, and the neighbourhood
+of Vienna) and utterly destroyed those of the Rugier who had not gone
+into Italy under his banner.  They had plundered, it is said, the cell of
+his old friend St. Severinus, as soon as the saint died, of the garments
+laid up for the poor, and a silver cup, and the sacred vessels of the
+mass.  Be that as it may, Odoacer utterly exterminated them, and carried
+their king Feletheus, or Fava, back to Italy, with Gisa his 'noxious
+wife;' and with them many Roman Christians, and (seemingly) the body of
+St. Severinus himself.  But this had been a small thing, if he had not
+advised himself to have a regular Roman triumph, with Fava, the captive
+king, walking beside his chariot; and afterwards, in the approved fashion
+of the ancient Romans on such occasions, to put Fava to death in cold
+blood.
+
+The records of this feat are to be found, as far as I know them, in one
+short chapter (I. xix.) of Paulus Diaconus, and in Muratori's notes
+thereto; but however small the records, the deed decided the fate of
+Italy.  Frederic, son of Fava, took refuge with the Ostrogoths, and
+demanded revenge in the name of his royal race; and it is easy to
+conceive that the sympathies of the Goths would be with him.  An attack
+(seemingly unprovoked) on an ancient Teutonic nation by a mere band of
+adventurers was--or could easily be made--a grievous wrong, and clear
+casus belli, over and above the innate Teutonic lust for fighting and
+adventures, simply for the sake of 'the sport.'
+
+Dietrich went back, and from that day, the dream of eastern luxury was
+broken, and young Dietrich was a Goth again, for good and for evil.
+
+He assembled the Goths, and marched straight on Constantinople, burning
+and pillaging as he went.  So say, at least, the Greek historians, of
+whom, all through this strange story, no one need believe more than he
+likes.  Had the Goths had the writing of the life of Dietrich, we should
+have heard another tale.  As it is, we have, as it were, a life of Lord
+Clive composed by the court scribes of Delhi.
+
+To no Roman would he tell what was in his mind.  Five leagues from
+Constantinople he paused.  Some say that he had compassion on the city
+where he had been brought up.  Who can tell?  He demanded to speak to
+Zeno alone, and the father in arms and his wild son met once more.  There
+was still strong in him the old Teutonic feudal instinct.  He was 'Zeno's
+man,' in spite of all.  He asked (says Jornandes) Zeno's leave to march
+against Odoacer, and conquer Italy.  Procopius and the Valesian Fragment
+say that Zeno sent him, and that in case of success, he was to reign
+there till Zeno came.  Zeno was, no doubt, glad to get rid of him at any
+price.  As Ennodius well says, 'Another's honour made him remember his
+own origin, and fear the very legions which obeyed him--for that
+obedience is suspected which serves the unworthy.'  Rome was only
+nominally under Zeno's dominion; and it mattered little to him whether
+Herule or Gothic adventurer called himself his representative.
+
+Then was held a grand function.  Dietrich, solemnly appointed
+'Patrician,' had Italy ceded to him by a 'Pragmatic' sanction, and Zeno
+placed on his head the sacrum velamen, a square of purple, signifying in
+Constantinople things wonderful, august, imperial--if they could only be
+made to come to pass.  And he made them come to pass.  He gathered all
+Teutonic heroes of every tribe, as well as his own; and through Roumelia,
+and through the Alps, a long and dangerous journey, went Dietrich and his
+Goths, with their wives and children, and all they had, packed on
+waggons; living on their flocks and herds, grinding their corn in hand-
+mills, and hunting as they went, for seven hundred miles of march;
+fighting as they went with Bulgars and Sarmatians, who had swarmed into
+the waste marches of Hungary and Carniola, once populous, cultivated, and
+full of noble cities; fighting a desperate battle with the Gepidae, up to
+their knees in a morass; till over the passes of the Julian Alps, where
+icicles hung upon their beards, and their clothes cracked with frost,
+they poured into the Venetian plains.  It was a daring deed; and needed a
+spirit like Dietrich's to carry it through.
+
+Odoacer awaited him near the ruins of Aquileia.  On the morning of the
+fight, as he was arming, Dietrich asked his noble mother to bring him
+some specially fine mantle, which she had embroidered for him, and put it
+over his armour, 'that all men may see how he goes gayer into the fight
+than ever he did into feast.  For this day she shall see whether she have
+brought a man-child into the world, or no.'
+
+And in front of Verona (where the plain was long white with human bones),
+he beat Odoacer, and after a short and sharp campaign, drove him to
+Ravenna.  But there, Roman fortifications, and Roman artillery, stopped,
+as usual, the Goth; and Odoacer fulfilled his name so well, and stood so
+stout, that he could only be reduced by famine; and at last surrendered
+on terms, difficult now to discover.
+
+Gibbon says, that there was a regular compact that they should enjoy
+equal authority, and refers to Procopius: but Procopius only says, that
+they should live together peaceably 'in that city.'  Be that as it may,
+Odoacer and his party were detected, after awhile, conspiring against
+Dietrich, and put to death in some dark fashion.  Gibbon, as advocatus
+diaboli, of course gives the doubt against Dietrich, by his usual
+enthymeme--All men are likely to be rogues, ergo, Dietrich was one.
+Rather hard measure, when one remembers that the very men who tell the
+story are Dietrich's own enemies.  By far the most important of them, the
+author of the Valesian Fragment, who considers Dietrich damned as an
+Arian, and the murderer of Boethius and Symmachus, says plainly that
+Odoacer plotted against his life.  But it was a dark business at best.
+
+Be that as it may, Dietrich the Amal found himself in one day king of all
+Italy, without a peer.  And now followed a three and thirty years' reign
+of wisdom, justice, and prosperity, unexampled in the history of those
+centuries.  Between the days of the Antonines and those of Charlemagne, I
+know no such bright spot in the dark history of Europe.
+
+As for his transferring the third of the lands of Italy, which had been
+held by Odoacer's men, to his own Goths,--that was just or unjust (even
+putting out of the question the rights of conquest), according to what
+manner of men Odoacer's mercenaries were, and what right they had to the
+lands.  At least it was done so, says Cassiodorus, that it notoriously
+gave satisfaction to the Romans themselves.  One can well conceive it.
+Odoacer's men had been lawless adventurers; and now law was installed as
+supreme.  Dietrich, in his long sojourn at the Emperor's court, had
+discovered the true secret of Roman power, which made the Empire terrible
+even in her fallen fortunes; and that was Law.  Law, which tells every
+man what to expect, and what is expected of him; and so gives, if not
+content, still confidence, energy, industry.  The Goths were to live by
+the Gothic law, the Romans by the Roman.  To amalgamate the two races
+would have been as impossible as to amalgamate English and Hindoos.  The
+parallel is really tolerably exact.  The Goth was very English; and the
+over-civilized, learned, false, profligate Roman was the very counterpart
+of the modern Brahmin.  But there was to be equal justice between man and
+man.  If the Goths were the masters of much of the Roman soil, still
+spoliation and oppression were forbidden; and the remarkable edict or
+code of Theodoric, shews how deeply into his great mind had sunk the idea
+of the divineness of Law.  It is short, and of Draconic severity,
+especially against spoliation, cheating, false informers, abuse by the
+clergy of the rights of sanctuary, and all offences against the honour of
+women.  I advise you all to study it, as an example of what an early
+Teutonic king thought men ought to do, and could be made to do.
+
+The Romans were left to their luxury and laziness; and their country
+villas (long deserted) were filled again by the owners.  The Goths were
+expected to perform military service, and were drilled from their youth
+in those military evolutions which had so often given the disciplined
+Roman the victory over the undisciplined Goth, till every pomoerium
+(boulevard), says Ennodius, might be seen full of boys and lads, learning
+to be soldiers.  Everything meanwhile was done to soothe the wounded
+pride of the conquered.  The senate of Rome was still kept up in name (as
+by Odoacer), her nobles flattered by sonorous titles, and the officers of
+the kingdom and the palace bore the same names as they would have done
+under Roman emperors.  The whole was an attempt to develop Dietrich's own
+Goths by the only civilization which he knew, that of Constantinople: but
+to engraft on it an order, a justice, a freedom, a morality, which was
+the 'barbarian' element.  The treasures of Roman art were placed under
+the care of government officers; baths, palaces, churches, aqueducts,
+were repaired or founded; to build seems to have been Dietrich's great
+delight; and we have left us, on a coin, some image of his own palace at
+Verona, a strange building with domes and minarets, something like a
+Turkish mosque; standing, seemingly, on the arcades of some older Roman
+building.  Dietrich the Goth may, indeed, be called the founder of
+'Byzantine' architecture throughout the Western world.
+
+Meanwhile, agriculture prospered once more; the Pontine Marshes were
+drained; the imperial ports restored, and new cities sprang up.  'The new
+ones,' says Machiavelli, 'were Venice, Siena, Ferrara, Aquileia; and
+those which became extended were Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Milan, Naples,
+and Bologna.'  Of these the great sea-ports, especially Venice, were
+founded not by Goths, but by Roman and Greek fugitives: but it was the
+security and liberality of Dietrich's reign which made their existence
+possible; and Venice really owes far more to the barbarian hero, than to
+the fabled patronage of St. Mark.
+
+'From this devastation and new population,' continues Machiavelli, 'arose
+new languages, which, partaking of the native idiom of the new people,
+and of the old Roman, formed a new manner of discourse.  Besides, not
+only were the names of provinces changed, but also of lakes, rivers,
+seas, and men; for France, Spain, and Italy are full of fresh names,
+wholly different from the ancient.'
+
+This reign of Dietrich was, in fact, the birth-hour of modern Italy; and,
+as Machiavelli says, 'brought the country to such a state of greatness,
+that her previous sufferings were unrecognizable.'  We shall see
+hereafter how the great Goth's work was all undone; and (to their
+everlasting shame) by whom it was undone.
+
+The most interesting records of the time are, without doubt, the letters
+of Cassiodorus, the king's secretary and chancellor, which have come down
+to us in great numbers.  There are letters among them on all questions of
+domestic and foreign policy: to the kings of the Varni, kings of the
+Herules, kings of the Thuringer (who were still heathens beyond the Black
+forest), calling on them all to join him and the Burgundians, and defend
+his son-in-law Alaric II., king of the Visigoths, against Clovis and his
+Franks.  There are letters, too, bearing on the religious feuds of the
+Roman population, and on the morals and social state of Rome itself, of
+which I shall say nothing in this lecture, having cause to refer to them
+hereafter.  But if you wish to know the times, you must read Cassiodorus
+thoroughly.
+
+In his letters you will remark how most of the so-called Roman names are
+Greek.  You will remark, too, as a sign of the decadence of taste and
+art, that though full of wisdom and practical morality, the letters are
+couched in the most wonderful bombast to be met with, even in that age of
+infimae Latinitatis.  One can only explain their style by supposing that
+King Dietrich, having supplied the sense, left it for Cassiodorus to
+shape it as he thought best; and when the letter was read over to him,
+took for granted (being no scholar) that that was the way in which Roman
+Caesars and other cultivated personages ought to talk; admired his
+secretary's learning; and probably laughed in his sleeve at the whole
+thing, thinking that ten words of honest German would have said all that
+he meant.  As for understanding these flights of rhetoric, it is
+impossible that Dietrich could have done so: perhaps not even Cassiodorus
+himself.  Take as one example, such a letter as this.--After a lofty
+moral maxim, which I leave for you to construe--'In partem pietatis
+recidit mitigata districtio; et sub beneficio praestat, qui poenam
+debitam moderatione considerata palpaverit,'--Jovinus the curial is
+informed, after the most complex method, that having first quarrelled
+with a fellow-curial, and then proceeded to kill him, he is banished for
+life to the isle of Volcano, among the Liparis.  As a curial is a
+gentleman and a government magistrate, the punishment is just enough; but
+why should Cassiodorus (certainly not King Dietrich) finish a short
+letter by a long dissertation on volcanoes in general, and Stromboli in
+particular, insisting on the wonder that the rocks, though continually
+burnt, are continually renewed by 'the inextricable potency of nature;'
+and only returning to Jovinus to inform him that he will henceforth
+follow the example of a salamander, which always lives in fire, 'being so
+contracted by natural cold, that it is tempered by burning flame.  It is
+a thin and small animal, connected with worms, and clothed with a yellow
+colour;' . . . Cassiodorus then returns to the main subject of volcanoes,
+and ends with a story of Stromboli having broken out just as Hannibal
+poisoned himself at the court of Prusias;--information which may have
+been interesting, though not consoling, to poor Jovinus, in the prospect
+of living there; but of which one would like to have had king Dietrich's
+opinion.  Did he felicitate himself like a simple Teuton, on the
+wonderful learning and eloquence of his Greek-Roman secretary?  Or did he
+laugh a royal laugh at the whole letter, and crack a royal joke at
+Cassiodorus and all quill-driving schoolmasters and lawyers--the two
+classes of men whom the Goths hated especially, and at the end to which
+they by their pedantries had brought imperial Rome?  One would like to
+know.  For not only was Dietrich no scholar himself, but he had a
+contempt for the very scholarship which he employed, and forbade the
+Goths to learn it--as the event proved, a foolish and fatal prejudice.
+But it was connected in his mind with chicanery, effeminacy, and with the
+cruel and degrading punishments of children.  Perhaps the ferula had been
+applied to him at Constantinople in old days.  If so, no wonder that he
+never learnt to write.  'The boy who trembles at a cane,' he used to say,
+'will never face a lance.'  His mother wit, meanwhile, was so shrewd that
+'many of his sayings (says the unknown author of the invaluable Valesian
+Fragment) remain among us to this day.'  Two only, as far as I know, have
+been preserved, quaint enough:
+
+   'He that hath gold, or a devil, cannot hide it.'
+
+And
+
+   'The Roman, when poor, apes the Goth: the Goth,
+   when rich, apes the Roman.'
+
+There is a sort of Solomon's judgment, too, told of him, in the case of a
+woman who refused to acknowledge her own son, which was effectual enough;
+but somewhat too homely to repeat.
+
+As for his personal appearance, it was given in a saga; but I have not
+consulted it myself, and am no judge of its authenticity.  The
+traditional description of him is that of a man almost beardless--a rare
+case among the Goths--with masses of golden ringlets, and black eyebrows
+over 'oculos caesios,' the blue grey eyes common to so many conquerors.  A
+complexion so peculiar, that one must believe it to be truly reported.
+
+His tragic death, and the yet more tragic consequences thereof, will be
+detailed in the next lecture.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE V--DIETRICH'S END.
+
+
+I have now to speak to you on the latter end of Dietrich's reign--made so
+sadly famous by the death of Boethius--the last Roman philosopher, as he
+has been called for centuries, and not unjustly.  His De Consolatione
+Philosophiae is a book good for any man, full of wholesome and godly
+doctrine.  For centuries it ranked as high as the highest classics;
+higher perhaps at times than any book save the Bible, among not merely
+scholars, but statesmen.  It is the last legacy of the dying old world to
+the young world which was trampling it out of life; and therefore it is
+full of sadness.  But beneath the sadness there is faith and hope; for
+God is just, and virtue must be triumphant and immortal, and the absolute
+and only good for man.  The whole story is very sad.  Dietrich was one of
+those great men, who like Henry VIII, Elizabeth, Napoleon, or the late
+Czar Nicholas, have lived too long for their own honour.  The old heathen
+would have attributed his misadventures to a [Greek text], an envy of the
+Gods, who will not abide to see men as prosperous as they themselves are.
+We may attribute it more simply and more piously to the wear and tear of
+frail humanity.  For it may be that very few human souls can stand for
+many years the strain of a great rule.  I do not mean that they break
+down from overwork, but that they are pulled out of shape by it; and
+that, especially, the will becomes enormously developed at the expense of
+the other powers of the soul, till the man becomes, as he grows older,
+imperious, careless of, or irritated by counsel, determined to have his
+own way because it is his own way.  We see the same tendency in all
+accustomed for a long while to absolute rule, even in petty matters;--in
+the old ship's captain, the old head of a factory, the old master of
+hounds; and we do not blame them for it.  It is a disease incident to
+their calling, as pedantry is to that of a scholar, or astuteness to that
+of an attorney.  But it is most dangerous in the greatest minds, and in
+the highest places; and only to be kept off by them, as by us, each in
+our place, by honest self-examination, diligent prayer, and the grace of
+God which comes thereby.  Once or twice in the world's history a great
+ruler, like Charles the Fifth, cuts the Gordian knot, and escapes into a
+convent: but how few can or ought to do that?  There are those who must
+go on ruling, or see their country ruined; for all depends on them.  So
+had Queen Elizabeth to do; so had Dietrich of Bern likewise.  After them
+would come the deluge, and did come; and they must endure to the last,
+whatever it may cost to their own health of character, or peace of mind.
+
+But most painful, and most dangerous to the veteran sovereign, is it to
+have learnt to suspect, perhaps to despise, those whom he rules; to have
+thrown away all his labour upon knaves and fools; to have cast his pearls
+before swine, and find them turning again and rending him.  That feeling,
+forced from Queen Elizabeth, in her old age, that tragic cry, 'I am a
+miserable forlorn woman.  There is none about me whom I can trust.'  She
+was a woman, always longing for some one to love; and her heart broke
+under it all.  But do you not see that where the ruler is not an
+affectionate woman, but a strong proud man, the effect may be very
+different, and very terrible?--how, roused to indignation, scorn,
+suspicion, rage, he may turn to bay against his own subjects, with
+'Scoundrels! you have seen the fair side of my character, and in vain.
+Now you shall see the foul, and beware for yourselves.'
+
+Even so, I fancy, did old Dietrich turn to bay, and did deeds which have
+blackened his name for ever.  Heaven forgive him! for surely he had
+provocation enough and to spare.
+
+I have told you of the simple, half-superstitious respect which the
+Teuton had for the prestige of Rome.  Dietrich seems to have partaken of
+it, like the rest.  Else why did he not set himself up as Caesar of Rome?
+Why did he always consider himself as son-in-arms, and quasi-vassal, of
+the Caesar of Constantinople?  He had been in youth overawed by the
+cunning civilization which he had seen in the great city.  He felt, with
+a noble modesty, that he could not emulate it.  He must copy it afar off.
+He must take to his counsels men like Cassiodorus, Symmachus, Boethius,
+born and bred in it; trained from childhood in the craft by which, as a
+patent fact, the Kaisers of Rome had been for centuries, even in their
+decay and degradation, the rulers of the nations.  Yet beneath that there
+must have been a perpetual under-current of contempt for it and for
+Rome--the 'colluvies gentium'--the sink of the nations, with its conceit,
+its pomposity, its beggary, its profligacy, its superstition, its
+pretence of preserving the Roman law and rights, while practically it
+cared for no law nor right at all.  Dietrich had had to write letter upon
+letter, to prevent the green and blue factions cutting each other's
+throats at the public spectacles; letters to the tribunus voluptatum, who
+had to look after the pantomimes and loose women, telling him to keep the
+poor wretches in some decent order, and to set them and the city an
+example of a better life, by being a chaste and respectable man himself.
+Letter upon letter of Cassiodorus', written in Dietrich's name, disclose
+a state of things in Rome on which a Goth could look only with disgust
+and contempt.
+
+And what if he discovered (or thought that he discovered) that these
+prating coxcombs--who were actually living on government bounty, and had
+their daily bread, daily bath, daily oil, daily pork, daily wine, found
+for them at government expense, while they lounged from the theatre to
+the church, and the church to the theatre--were plotting with Justin the
+scoundrel and upstart Emperor at Constantinople, to restore forsooth the
+liberties of Rome?  And that that was their answer to his three and
+thirty years of good government, respect, indulgence, which had raised
+them up again out of all the miseries of domestic anarchy and foreign
+invasion?
+
+And what if he discovered (or thought that he discovered) that the
+Catholic Clergy, with Pope John at their head, were in the very same plot
+for bringing in the Emperor of Constantinople, on the grounds of
+religion; because he was persecuting the Arian Goths at Constantinople,
+and therefore would help them to persecute them in Italy?  And that that
+was their answer to his three and thirty years of unexampled religious
+liberty?  Would not those two facts (even the belief that they were
+facts) have been enough to drive many a wise man mad?
+
+How far they were facts, we never shall exactly know.  Almost all our
+information comes from Catholic historians--and he would be a rash man
+who would pin his faith on any statement of theirs concerning the actions
+of a heretic.  But I think, even with no other help than theirs, we may
+see why Dietrich would have looked with horror on any intimacy between
+the Church of Rome and the Court of Constantinople.
+
+We must remember first what the Greek Empire was then, and who was the
+new Emperor.  Anastasius the poor old Emperor, dying at eighty with his
+heart broken by monks and priests, had an ugly dream; and told it to
+Amantius the eunuch and lord chamberlain.  Whereon Amantius said he had
+had a dream too;--how a great hog flew at him as he was in waiting in the
+very presence, and threw him down and eat him fairly up.  Which came
+true--though not in the way Amantius expected.  On the death of
+Anastasius he determined to set up as Emperor a creature of his own.  For
+this purpose he must buy the guards; to which noble end he put a large
+sum of treasure into the hands of Justin, senator, and commander-in-chief
+of the said guards, who takes the money, and spends it on his own
+account; so that the miserable eunuch finds, not his man, but Justin
+himself, Emperor, and his hard-earned money spent against him.  The mere
+rise of this unscrupulous swindler and his still more unscrupulous
+nephew, Justinian, would have been enough to rouse Dietrich's suspicion,
+if not fear.
+
+Deep and unspeakable must have been the royal Amal's contempt for the
+man.  For he must have known him well at Constantinople in his youth;
+known how he was a Goth or other Teuton after all, though he was called a
+Dardanian; how his real name was Uprauda (upright), the son of
+Stock--which Uprauda he had latinized into Justinus.  The Amal knew well
+how he had entered the Emperor's guard; how he had intrigued and fought
+his way up (for the man did not lack courage and conduct) to his
+general's commission; and now, by a crowning act of roguery, to the
+Empire.  He had known too, most probably, the man's vulgar peasant wife,
+who, in her efforts to ape royalty, was making herself the laughing-stock
+of the people, and who was urging on her already willing husband to
+persecute.  And this man he saw ready to convulse his own Empire by
+beginning a violent persecution against the Arians.  He was dangerous
+enough as a villain, doubly dangerous as a bigot also.
+
+We must remember next what the Greek Church was then; a chaos of
+intrigue, villainy, slander, and wild fury, tearing to pieces itself and
+the whole Empire by religious feuds, in which the doctrine in question
+becomes invisible amid the passions and crimes of the disputants, while
+the Lords of the Church were hordes of wild monks, who swarm out of their
+dens to head the lowest mobs, or fight pitched battles with each other.
+The ecclesiastical history of the fifth century in the Eastern Empire is
+one, which not even the genius of a Gibbon or a Milman can make
+interesting, or even intelligible.
+
+Recollect that Dietrich had seen much of this with his own eyes; had seen
+actually, as I told you, the rebellion of Basiliscus and the Eutychian
+Bishops headed by the mad Daniel the Stylite against his foster father
+the Emperor Zeno; had seen that Emperor (as Dean Milman forcibly puts it)
+'flying before a naked hermit, who had lost the use of his legs by
+standing sixteen years upon a column.'  Recollect that Dietrich and his
+Goths had helped to restore that Emperor to his throne; and then
+understand in what a school he had learnt his great ideas of religious
+toleration: how deep must have been the determination to have no such
+doings in his kingdom; how deep, too, the dread of any similar outbreak
+at Rome.
+
+Recollect, also, that now in his old age he had just witnessed the same
+iniquities again rending the Eastern Empire; the old Emperor Anastasius
+hunted to death by armies of mad monks about the Monophysite Heresy; the
+cities, even the holiest places of the East, stained with Christian
+blood; everywhere mob-law, murder, treachery, assassination even in the
+house of God; and now the new Emperor Justin was throwing himself into
+the party of the Orthodox with all the blind rage of an ignorant peasant;
+persecuting, expelling, shutting up the Arian Churches of the Goths,
+refusing to hear Dietrich's noble appeals; and evidently organizing a
+great movement against those peaceable Arians, against whom, during the
+life-time of Dietrich, their bitterest enemies do not allege a single
+case of persecution.
+
+Remember, too, that Dietrich had had experience of similar outbreaks of
+fanaticism at Rome; that the ordination of two rival Popes had once made
+the streets run with blood; that he had seen priests murdered,
+monasteries fired, nuns insulted, and had had to interfere with the
+strong arm of the law, and himself decide in favour of the Pope who had
+the most votes, and was first chosen; and that in the quarrels,
+intrigues, and slanders, which followed that election, he had had too
+good proof that the ecclesiastics and the mob of Rome, if he but let
+them, could behave as ill as that of Constantinople; and, moreover, that
+this new Pope John, who seems to have been a hot-headed fanatic, had
+begun his rule by whipping and banishing Manichees--by whose permission,
+does not appear.
+
+Recollect too, that for some reason or other, Dietrich, when he had
+interfered in Eastern matters, had been always on the side of the
+Orthodox and the Council of Chalcedon.  He had fought for the Orthodox
+against Basiliscus.  He had backed the Orthodox and Vitalianus their
+champion, against the late Emperor Anastasius; and now as soon as the
+Orthodox got into power under Justin, this was the reward of his
+impartiality.  If he did not distrust and despise the Church and Emperor
+of the East, he must have been not a hero, but a saint.
+
+Recollect, too, that in those very days, Catholic bigotry had broken out
+in a general plunder of the Jews.  At Rome, at Milan, and Genoa their
+houses had been sacked, and their synagogues burnt; and Dietrich, having
+compelled the Catholics to rebuild them at their own expense, had earned
+the hatred of a large portion of his subjects.  And now Pope John was
+doing all he could to thwart him.  Dietrich bade him go to
+Constantinople, and plead with Justin for the persecuted Arians.  He
+refused.  Dietrich shipt him off, nolentem volentem.  But when he got to
+Constantinople he threw his whole weight into the Emperor's scale.  He
+was received by Justin as if he was St. Peter himself, the Emperor coming
+out to meet him with processions and wax-lights, imploring his blessing;
+he did exactly the opposite to what Dietrich bade him do; and published
+on his return a furious epistle to the bishops of Italy, calling upon
+them to oppress and extirpate the Arian perfidy, so that no root of it is
+left: to consecrate the Arian churches wheresoever he found them,
+pleading the advice of the most pious and Christian Emperor Justin,
+talking of Dietrich as tainted inwardly and wrapt up outwardly with the
+pest of heresy.  On which Cochlaeus (who religiously believes that
+Dietrich was damned for his Arianism, and that all his virtues went for
+nothing because he had not charity, which exists, he says, alone within
+the pale of the Church), cannot help the naive comment, that if the
+Pontiff did really write that letter, he cannot wonder at Dietrich's
+being a little angry.  Kings now, it is true, can afford to smile at such
+outbursts; they could not afford to do so in Dietrich's days.  Such words
+meant murder, pillage, civil war, dethronement, general anarchy; and so
+Dietrich threw Pope John into prison.  He had been in bad health before
+he sailed to Constantinople, and in a few months he died, and was
+worshipped as a saint.
+
+As for the political conspiracy, we shall never know the truth of it.  The
+'Anonymus Valesii,' meanwhile says, that when Cyprian accused Albinus,
+Boethius answered, 'It is false: but if Albinus has done it, so have I,
+and the whole senate, with one consent.  It is false, my Lord King!'
+Whatever such words may prove, they prove at least this, that Boethius,
+as he says himself, was the victim of his own chivalry.  To save Albinus,
+and the senate, he thrust himself into the fore-front of the battle, and
+fell at least like a brave man.  Whether Albinus, Boethius, and Symmachus
+did plot to bring in Justin; whether the senate did send a letter to him,
+I cannot tell.  Boethius, in his De Consolatione, denies it all; and
+Boethius was a good man.  He says that the letters in which he hoped for
+the liberty of Rome were forged; how could he hope for the impossible?
+but he adds, 'would that any liberty could have been hoped for!  I would
+have answered the king as Cassius did, when falsely accused of conspiring
+by Caligula: "If I had known of it, you should not."'  One knows not
+whether Dietrich ever saw those words: but they prove at least that all
+his confidence, justice, kindness to the patrician philosopher, had not
+won him from the pardonable conceit about the Romani nominis umbram.
+
+Boethius' story is most probably true.  One cannot think that that man
+would die with a lie in his mouth.  One cannot pass by, as the utterances
+of a deliberate hypocrisy, those touching appeals to his guiding
+mistress, that heavenly wisdom who has led him so long upon the paths of
+truth and virtue, and who seems to him, in his miserable cell, to have
+betrayed him in his hour of need.  Heaven forbid.  Better to believe that
+Dietrich committed once in his life, a fearful crime, than that good
+Boethius' famous book is such another as the Eikon Basilike.
+
+Boethius, again, says that the Gothic courtiers hated him, and suborned
+branded scoundrels to swear away his life and that of the senate, because
+he had opposed 'the hounds of the palace,' Amigast, Trigulla, and other
+greedy barbarians.  There was, of course, a Gothic party and a Roman
+party about the court; and each hated the other bitterly.  Dietrich had
+favoured the Romans.  But the Goths could not have seen such men as
+Symmachus and Boethius the confidants and counsellors of the Amal,
+without longing for their downfall; and if, as Boethius and the Catholic
+historians say, the whole tragedy arose out of a Gothic plot to destroy
+the Roman party, such things have happened but too often in the world's
+history.  The only facts which make against the story are, that Cyprianus
+the accuser was a Roman, and that Cassiodorus, who must have belonged to
+the Roman party, not only is never mentioned during the whole tragedy,
+but was high in power under Theodatus and Athalaric afterwards.
+
+Add to this, that there were vague but wide-spread reports that the Goths
+were in danger; that Dietrich at least could not be ignorant of the
+ambition and the talents of that terrible Justinian, Justin's nephew, who
+was soon to alter, for a generation, the fortunes of the whole Empire,
+and to sweep the Goths from Italy; that men's minds must have been
+perplexed with fear of change, when they recollected that Dietrich was
+seventy years old, without a son to succeed him, and that a woman and a
+child would soon rule that great people in a crisis, which they could not
+but foresee.  We know that the ruin came; is it unreasonable to suppose
+that the Goths foresaw it, and made a desperate, it may be a treacherous,
+effort to crush once and for all, the proud and not less treacherous
+senators of Rome?
+
+So, maddened with the fancied discovery that the man whom he had
+honoured, trusted, loved, was conspiring against him, Dietrich sent
+Boethius to prison.  He seems, however, not to have been eager for his
+death; for Boethius remained there long enough to write his noble book.
+
+However, whether fresh proofs of his supposed guilt were discovered or
+not, the day came when he must die.  A cord was twisted round his head
+(probably to extort confession), till his eyes burst from their sockets,
+and then he was put out of his misery by a club; and so ended the last
+Roman philosopher.  Symmachus, his father-in-law, was beheaded; and Pope
+John, as we have heard, was thrown into prison on his return, and died
+after a few months.  These are the tragedies which have stained for ever
+the name of 'Theodoric the Great.'
+
+Pope John seems to have fairly earned his imprisonment.  For the two
+others, we can only, I fear, join in the sacred pity in which their
+memories have been embalmed to all succeeding generations.  But we must
+recollect, that after all, we know but one side of the question.  The
+Romans could write; the Goths could not: they may have been able to make
+out a fair case for themselves; they may have believed truly in the guilt
+of Boethius; and if they did, nothing less could have happened, by such
+rules of public law and justice as were then in vogue, than did happen.
+
+Be that as it may, the deed was done; and the punishment, if deserved,
+came soon enough.  Sitting at dinner (so the story runs), the head of a
+fish took in Dietrich's fancy the shape of Symmachus' head, the upper
+teeth biting the lip, the great eyes staring at him.  He sprang up in
+horror; took to his bed; and there, complaining of a mortal chill,
+wrapping himself up in heaps of blankets, and bewailing to his physician
+the death of his two victims, he died sadly in a few days.  And a certain
+holy hermit, name not given, nor date of the vision, saw the ghosts of
+Boethius and Symmachus lead the Amal's soul up the cone of Stromboli, and
+hurl him in, as the English sailors saw old Boots, the Wapping usurer,
+hurled into the same place, for offences far more capable of proof.
+
+So runs the story of Dietrich's death.  It is perfectly natural, and very
+likely true.  His contemporaries, who all believed it, saw in it proof of
+his enormous guilt, and the manifest judgment of God.  We shall rather
+see in it a proof of the earnest, child-like, honest nature of the man,
+startled into boundless horror and self-abasement, by the sudden
+revelation of his crime.  Truly bad men die easier deaths than that; and
+go down to the grave, for the most part, blind and self-contented, and,
+as they think, unpunished; and perhaps forgiven.
+
+After Dietrich came the deluge.  The royal head was gone.  The royal
+heart remained in Amalasuentha 'the heavenly beauty,' a daughter worthy
+of her father.
+
+One of her first acts was to restore to the widows and children of the
+two victims the estates which Dietrich had confiscated.  That may, or may
+not, prove that she thought the men innocent.  She may have only felt it
+royal not to visit the sins of the fathers on the children; and those
+fathers, too, her own friends and preceptors.  Beautiful, learned, and
+wise, she too was, like her father, before her age.  She, the pupil of
+Boethius, would needs bring up her son Athalaric in Roman learning, and
+favour the Romans in all ways; never putting to death or even fining any
+of them, and keeping down the rough Goths, who were ready enough, now
+Dietrich's hand was off them, to ill-use the conquered Italians.  The
+Goths soon grew to dislike her, and her Roman tendencies, her Roman
+education of the lad.  One day she boxed his ears for some fault.  He ran
+crying out into the Heldensaal, and complained to the heroes.  They sent
+a deputation to Amalasuentha, insolent enough.  'The boy should not be
+made a scholar of.'  'She meant to kill the boy and marry again.  Had not
+old Dietrich forbidden free Goths to go to schoolmasters, and said, that
+the boy who was taught to tremble at a cane, would never face a lance?'
+So they took the lad away from the women, and made a ruffian of him.  What
+with drink, women, idleness, and the company of wild young fellows like
+himself, he was early ruined, body and soul.  Poor Amalasuentha, not
+knowing whither to turn, took the desperate resolution of offering Italy
+to the Emperor Justinian.  She did not know that her cousin Theodatus had
+been beforehand with her--a bad old man, greedy and unjust, whose
+rapacity she had had to control again and again, and who hated her in
+return.  Both send messages to Justinian.  The wily Emperor gave no
+direct answer: but sent his ambassador to watch the course of events.  The
+young prince died of debauchery, and the Goths whispered that his mother
+had poisoned him.  Meanwhile Theodatus went on from bad to worse;
+accusations flowed in to Amalasuentha of his lawless rapacity: but he was
+too strong for her; and she, losing her head more and more, made the
+desperate resolve of marrying him, as the only way to keep him quiet.  He
+was the last male heir of the royal Amalungs.  The marriage would set him
+right in the eyes of the Goths, while it would free her from the
+suspicion of having murdered her son, in order to reign alone.  Theodatus
+meanwhile was to have the name of royalty; but she was to keep the power
+and the money--a foolish, confused plan, which could have but one ending.
+Theodatus married her of course, and then cast her into prison, seized
+all her treasures, and threw himself into the arms of that party among
+the Goths, who hated Amalasuentha for having punished their oppressions.
+The end was swift and sad.  By the time that Justinian's ambassador
+landed, Amalasuentha was strangled in her bath; and all that Peter the
+ambassador had to do was, to catch at the cause of quarrel, and declare
+'inexpiable war' on the part of Justinian, as the avenger of the Queen.
+
+And then began that dreadful East Goth war, which you may read for
+yourselves in the pages of an eye-witness, Procopius;--a war which
+destroyed utterly the civilization of Dietrich's long and prosperous
+reign, left Italy a desert, and exterminated the Roman people.
+
+That was the last woe: but of it I must tell you in my next Lecture.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VI--THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS.
+
+
+Of this truly dreadful Gothic war I can give you but a hasty sketch; of
+some of the most important figures in it, not even a sketch.  I cannot
+conceive to myself, and therefore cannot draw for you, the famous
+Belisarius.  Was he really the strange compound of strength and weakness
+which Procopius, and after him Gibbon, represent him?--a caricature, for
+good and evil, of our own famous Marlborough?  You must read and judge
+for yourselves.  I cannot, at least as yet, offer you any solution of the
+enigma.
+
+Still less can I conceive to myself Narses, living till his grey hairs in
+the effeminate intrigues of the harem, and then springing forth a
+general; the Warrior Eunuch; the misanthrope avenging his great wrong
+upon all mankind in bloody battle-fields; dark of counsel, and terrible
+of execution; him to whom in after years the Empress Sophia sent word
+that he was more fit to spin among maids than to command armies, and he
+answered, that he would spin her such a thread as she could not unravel;
+and kept his word (as legends say) by inviting the Lombards into Italy.
+
+Least of all can I sketch Justinian the Great, the half-Teuton peasant,
+whom his uncle Justin sent for out of the Dardanian hills, to make him a
+demigod upon earth.  Men whispered in after years that he was born of a
+demon, a demon himself, passing whole days without food, wandering up and
+down his palace corridors all night, resolving dark things, and labouring
+all day with Herculean force to carry them out.  No wonder he was thought
+to be a demon, wedded to a demon-wife.  The man is unfathomable,
+inexplicable;--marrying deliberately the wickedest of all women, plainly
+not for mere beauty's sake, but possibly because he saw in her a
+congenial intellect;--faithful and loving to her and she to him, amid all
+the crimes of their following years;--pious with exceeding devotion and
+orthodoxy, and yet with a piety utterly divorced from, unconscious of,
+the commonest morality;--discerning and using the greatest men,
+Belisarius and Narses for example, and throwing them away again, surely
+not in weak caprice, whenever they served him too well;--conquering
+Persians, Vandals, Goths; all but re-conquering, in fact, the carcase
+Roman Empire;--and then trying (with a deep discernment of the value of
+Roman law) to put a galvanic life into the carcase by codifying that law.
+
+In whatever work I find this man, during his long life, he is to me
+inexplicable.  Louis XI of France is the man most like Justinian whom I
+know, but he, too, is a man not to be fathomed by me.  All the facts
+about Justinian you will find in Gibbon.  I have no theory by which to
+arrange and explain them, and therefore can tell you no more than Gibbon
+does.
+
+So to this Gothic war; which, you must remember, became possible for
+Justinian by Belisarius' having just destroyed the Vandals out of Africa.
+It began by Belisarius invading the south of Italy.  Witigis was elected
+war-king of the Goths, 'the man of witty counsels,' who did not fulfil
+his name; while Theodatus (Theod-aht 'esteemed by the people' as his name
+meant) had fallen into utter disesteem, after some last villainy about
+money; had been struck down in the road by the man he had injured; and
+there had his throat cut, 'resupinus instar victimae jugulatus.'
+
+He had consulted a Jew diviner just before, who had given him a warning.
+Thirty pigs, signifying the unclean Gentiles, the Jew shut up in three
+sties; naming ten Goths, ten Romans, and ten Imperialists of Belisarius'
+army, and left them to starve.  At the end they found dead all the Goths
+but two, hardly any of the Imperialists, and half the Romans: but the
+five Roman pigs who were left had lost their bristles--bare to the skin,
+as the event proved.
+
+After that Theodatus had no heart to fight, and ended his dog's life by a
+dog's death, as we have seen.
+
+Note also this, that there was a general feeling of coming ruin; that
+there were quaint signs and omens.  We have heard of the pigs which
+warned the Goths.  Here is another.  There was a Mosaic picture of
+Theodoric at Naples; it had been crumbling to pieces at intervals, and
+every fresh downfall had marked the death of an Amal.  Now the last
+remains went down, to the very feet, and the Romans believed that it
+foretold the end of the Amal dynasty.  There was a Sibylline oracle too;
+
+   'Quintili mense Roma nihil Geticum metuet.'
+
+Here, too, we find the last trace of heathenism, of that political
+mythology which had so inextricably interwoven itself with the life and
+history of the city.  The shrine of Janus was still standing, all of
+bronze, only just large enough, Procopius says, to contain the bronze
+image of Janus Bifrons.  The gates, during Christian centuries, had never
+been opened, even in war time.  Now people went by night, and tried to
+force them open: but hardly succeeded.
+
+Belisarius garrisoned Rome, and the Goths attacked it, but in vain.  You
+must read the story of that famous siege in the really brilliant pages of
+old Procopius, the last good historian of the old world.
+
+Moreover, and this is most important, Belisarius raised the native
+population against the Goths.  As he had done in Africa, when in one
+short campaign he utterly destroyed the now effeminate aristocracy of the
+Vandals, so he did in Italy.  By real justice and kindness; by
+proclaiming himself the deliverer of the conquered from the yoke of
+foreign tyrants, he isolated the slave-holding aristocracy of the Goths
+from the mass of the inhabitants of Italy.
+
+Belisarius and the Goths met, and the Goths conquered.  But to take Rome
+was beyond their power; and after that a long miserable war struggled and
+wrangled up and down over the wretched land; city after city was taken
+and destroyed, now by Roman, now by Goth.  The lands lay waste, the
+people disappeared in tens of thousands.  All great Dietrich's work of
+thirty years was trampled into mud.
+
+There were horrible sieges and destructions by both parties;--sack of
+Milan by Goths, sack of Rimini and the country round by Romans; horrors
+of famine at Auximum; two women who kept an inn, killing and eating
+seventeen men, till the eighteenth discovered the trap and killed them.
+Everywhere, as I say, good Dietrich's work of thirty years trampled into
+gory mud.
+
+Then Theudebert and his false Franks came down to see what they could
+get; all (save a few knights round the king) on foot, without bow or
+lance; but armed with sword, shield, and heavy short-handled double-edged
+francisc, or battle-axe.  At the bridge over the Ticinus they (nominal
+Catholics) sacrificed Gothic women and children with horrid rites, fought
+alike Goths and Romans, lost a third of their army by dysentery, and went
+home again.
+
+At last, after more horrors, Vitigis and his Goths were driven into
+Ravenna.  Justinian treated for peace; and then followed a strange
+peripeteia, which we have, happily, from an eye-witness, Procopius
+himself.  The Roman generals outside confessed their chance of success
+hopeless.  The Goths inside, tired of the slow Vitigis, send out to the
+great Belisarius, Will he be their king?  King over them there in Italy?
+He promised, meaning to break his promise; and to the astonishment and
+delight of the Romans, the simple and honest barbarians opened the gates
+of Ravenna, and let in him and his Romans, to find themselves betrayed
+and enslaved.  'When I saw our troops march in,' says Procopius, 'I felt
+it was God's doing, so to turn their minds.  The Goths,' he says, 'were
+far superior in numbers and in strength; and their women, who had fancied
+these Romans to be mighty men of valour, spit in the faces of their huge
+husbands, and pointing to the little Romans, reproached them with having
+surrendered to such things as that.'  But the folly was committed.
+Belisarius carried them away captive to Constantinople, and so ended the
+first act of the Gothic war.
+
+In the moment of victory the envy of the Byzantine court undid all that
+it had done.  Belisarius returned with his captives to Rome, not for a
+triumph, but for a disgrace; and Italy was left open to the Goths, if
+they had men and heart to rise once more.
+
+And they did rise.  Among the remnant of the race was left a hero, Totila
+by name;--a Teuton of the ancient stamp.  Totilas, 'free from death'--'the
+deathless one,' they say his name means.  Under him the nation rose once
+more as out of the ground.
+
+A Teuton of the ancient stamp he was, just and merciful exceedingly.  Take
+but two instances of him, and know the man by them.  He retook Naples.
+The Romans within were starving.  He fed them; but lest they should die
+of the sudden repletion, he kept them in by guards at each gate, and fed
+them up more and more each day, till it was safe to let them out, to find
+food for themselves in the country.  A Roman came to complain that a Goth
+had violated his daughter.  He shall die, said Totila.  He shall not die,
+said the Goths.  He is a valiant hero.  They came clamouring to the king.
+He answered them quietly and firmly.  They may choose to-day, whether to
+let this man go unpunished, or to save the Gothic nation and win the
+victory.  Do they not recollect how at the beginning of the war, they had
+brave soldiers, famous generals, countless treasures, horses, weapons,
+and all the forts of Italy?  And yet under Theodatus, a man who loved
+gold better than justice, they had so angered God by their unrighteous
+lives, that--what had happened they knew but too well.  Now God had
+seemed to have avenged himself on them enough.  He had begun a new course
+with them.  They must begin a new course with him; and justice was the
+only path.  As for the man's being a valiant hero: let them know that the
+unjust and the ravisher were never brave in fight; but that according to
+a man's life, such was his luck in battle.
+
+His noble words came all but true.  The feeble generals who were filling
+Belisarius's place were beaten one by one, and almost all Italy was
+reconquered.  Belisarius had to be sent back again to Italy: but the
+envy, whether of Justinian himself, or of the two wicked women who ruled
+his court, allowed him so small a force that he could do nothing.
+
+Totila and the Goths came down once more to Rome.  Belisarius in agony
+sent for reinforcements, and got them; but too late.  He could not
+relieve Rome.  The Goths had massed themselves round the city, and
+Belisarius, having got to Ostia (Portus) at the Tiber's mouth, could get
+no further.  This was the last woe; the actual death-agony of ancient
+Rome.  The famine grew and grew.  The wretched Romans cried to Bessas and
+his garrison, either to feed them or to kill them out of their misery.
+They would do neither.  They could hardly at last feed themselves.  The
+Romans ate nettles off the ruins, and worse things still.  There was not
+a dog or a rat left.  They even killed themselves.  One father of five
+children could bear no longer their cries for food.  He wrapped his head
+in his mantle, and sprang into the Tiber, while the children looked on.
+The survivors wandered about like spectres, brown with hunger, and
+dropped dead with half-chewed nettles between their lips.  To this, says
+Procopius, had fortune brought the Roman senate and people.  Nay, not
+fortune, but wickedness.  They had wished to play at being free, while
+they themselves were the slaves of sin.
+
+And still Belisarius was coming,--and still he did not come.  He was
+forcing his way up the Tiber; he had broken Totila's chain, burnt a tower
+full of Goths, and the city was on the point of being relieved, when one
+Isaac made a fool of himself, and was taken by the Goths.  Belisarius
+fancied that Portus, his base of operations, with all his supplies, and
+Antonia, the worthless wife on whom he doted, were gone.  He lost his
+head, was beaten terribly, fell back on Ostia, and then the end came.
+Isaurians from within helped in Goths by night.  The Asinarian gate was
+opened, and Rome was in the hands of the Goths.
+
+And what was left?  What of all the pomp and glory, the spoils of the
+world, the millions of inhabitants?
+
+Five or six senators, who had taken refuge in St. Peter's, and some five
+hundred of the plebs; Pope Pelagius crouching at Totila's feet, and
+crying for mercy; and Rusticiana, daughter of Symmachus, Boethius' widow,
+with other noble women, in slaves' rags, knocking without shame at door
+after door to beg a bit of bread.  And that was what was left of Rome.
+
+Gentlemen, I make no comment.  I know no more awful page in the history
+of Europe.  Through such facts as these God speaks.  Let man be silent;
+and look on in fear and trembling, knowing that it was written of old
+time--The wages of sin are death.
+
+The Goths wanted to kill Rusticiana.  She had sent money to the Roman
+generals; she had thrown down Dietrich's statues, in revenge for the
+death of her father and her husband.  Totila would not let them touch
+her.  Neither maid, wife, nor widow, says Procopius, was the worse for
+any Goth.
+
+Next day he called the heroes together.  He is going to tell them the old
+tale, he says--How in Vitigis' time at Ravenna, 7000 Greeks had conquered
+and robbed of kingdom and liberty 200,000 rich and well-armed Goths.  And
+now that they were raw levies, few, naked, wretched, they had conquered
+more than 20,000 of the enemy.  And why?  Because of old they had looked
+to everything rather than to justice; they had sinned against each other
+and the Romans.  Therefore they must choose, and be just men henceforth,
+and have God with them, or unjust, and have God against them.
+
+Then he sends for the wretched remnant of the senators and tells them the
+plain truth:--How the great Dietrich and his successors had heaped them
+with honour and wealth; and how they had returned his benefits by
+bringing in the Greeks.  And what had they gained by changing Dietrich
+for Justinian?  Logothetes, who forced them by blows to pay up the money
+which they had already paid to their Gothic rulers; and revenue exacted
+alike in war and in peace.  Slaves they deserve to be; and slaves they
+shall be henceforth.
+
+Then he sends to Justinian.  He shall withdraw his army from Italy, and
+make peace with him.  He will be his ally and his son in arms, as
+Dietrich had been to the Emperors before him, or if not, he will kill the
+senate, destroy Rome, and march into Illyricum.
+
+Justinian leaves it to Belisarius.
+
+Then Totila begins to destroy Rome.  He batters down the walls, he is
+ready to burn the town.  He will turn the evil place into a
+sheep-pasture.  Belisarius flatters and cajoles him from his purpose, and
+he marches away with all his captives, leaving not a living soul in Rome.
+
+But Totila shews himself a general unable to cope with that great
+tactician.  He divides his forces, and allows Belisarius to start out of
+Ostia and fortify himself in Rome.  The Goths are furious at his
+rashness: but it is too late, and the war begins again, up and down the
+wretched land, till Belisarius is recalled by some fresh court intrigue
+of his wicked wife, and another and even more terrible enemy appears on
+the field, Narses the eunuch, avenging his wrong upon his fellow-men by
+cunning and courage almost preternatural.  He comes upon them with a
+mighty host: but not of Romans alone.  He has gathered the Teuton
+tribes;--Herules, the descendants probably of Odoacer's confederates;
+Gepids, who have a long blood-feud against the Goths; and most terrible
+of all, Alboin with his five thousand more Burgundians, of whom you will
+hear enough hereafter.  We read even of multitudes of Huns, and even of
+Persian deserters from the Chosroo.  But Narses' policy is the old Roman
+one--Teuton must destroy Teuton.  And it succeeds.
+
+In spite of some trouble with the Franks, who are holding Venetia, he
+marches down victorious through the wasted land, and Totila marches to
+meet him in the Apennines.  The hero makes his last speech.  He says,
+'There will be no need to talk henceforth.  This day will end the war.
+They are not to fear these hired Huns, Herules, Lombards, fighting for
+money.  Let them hold together like desperate men.'  So they fight it
+out.  The Goths depending entirely on the lance, the Romans on a due use
+of every kind of weapon.  The tremendous charge of the Gothic knights is
+stopped by showers of Hun and Herule arrows, and they roll back again and
+again in disorder on the foot: but in spite of the far superior numbers
+of the Romans, it is not till nightfall that Narses orders a general
+advance of his line.  The Goths try one last charge; but appalled by the
+numbers of the enemy, break up, and, falling back on the foot, throw them
+into confusion, and all is lost.
+
+The foot are cut down flying.  The knights ride for their lives.  Totila
+and five horsemen are caught up by Asbad the Gepid chief.  Asbad puts his
+lance in rest, not knowing who was before him.  'Dog,' cries Totila's
+page, 'wilt thou strike thy lord?'  But it is too late.  Asbad's lance
+goes through his back, and he drops on his horse's neck.  Scipwar
+(Shipward) the Goth wounds Asbad, and falls wounded himself.  The rest
+carry off Totila.  He dies that night, after reigning eleven stormy
+years.
+
+The Goths flee across the Po.  There is one more struggle for life, and
+one more hero left.  Teia by name, 'the slow one,' slow, but strong.  He
+shall be king now.  They lift him on the shield, and gather round him
+desperate, but determined to die hard.  He finds the treasure of Totila,
+hid in Pisa.  He sends to Theudebald and his Franks.  Will they help him
+against the Roman, and they shall have the treasure; the last remnant of
+the Nibelungen hoard.  No.  The Luegenfelden will not come.  They will
+stand by and see the butchery, on the chance of getting all Italy for
+themselves.  Narses storms Rome--or rather a little part of it round
+Hadrian's Mole, which the Goths had fortified; and the Goths escape down
+into Campania, mad with rage.
+
+That victory of Narses, says Procopius, brought only a more dreadful
+destruction on the Roman senate and people.  The Goths, as they go down,
+murder every Roman they meet.  The day of grace which Totila had given
+them is over.  The Teutons in Narses' army do much the same.  What matter
+to Burgunds and Herules who was who, provided they had any thing to be
+plundered of?  Totila has allowed many Roman senators to live in
+Campania.  They hear that Narses has taken Rome, they begin to flock to
+the ghastly ruin.  Perhaps there will be once again a phantom senate,
+phantom consuls, under the Romani nominis umbram.  The Goths catch them,
+and kill them to a man.  And there is an end of the Senatus Populusque
+Romanus.
+
+The end is near now.  And yet these terrible Goths cannot be killed out
+of the way.  On the slopes of Vesuvius, by Nuceria, they fortify a camp;
+and as long as they are masters of the neighbouring sea, for two months
+they keep Narses at bay.  At last he brings up an innumerable fleet, cuts
+off their supplies; and then the end comes.  The Goths will die like
+desperate men on foot.  They burst out of camp, turn their horses loose,
+after the fashion of German knights--One hears of the fashion again and
+again in the middle age,--and rush upon the enemy in deep solid column.
+The Romans have hardly time to form some sort of line; and then not the
+real Romans, I presume, but the Burgunds and Gepids, turn their horses
+loose like the Goths.  There is no need for tactics; the fight is hand to
+hand; every man, says Procopius, rushing at the man nearest him.
+
+For a third of the day Teia fights in front, sheltered by his long
+pavisse, stabbing with a mighty lance at the mob which makes at him, as
+dogs at a boar at bay.  Procopius is awed by the man.  Most probably he
+saw him with his own eyes.  Second in valour, he says, to none of the
+Heroes.
+
+Again and again his shield is full of darts.  Without moving a foot,
+without turning an inch right or left, says Procopius, he catches another
+from his shield-bearer, and fights on.  At last he has twelve lances in
+his shield, and cannot move it: coolly he calls for a fresh one, as if he
+were fixed to the soil, thrusts back the enemy with his left hand, and
+stabs at them with his right.  But his time is come.  As he shifts his
+shield for a moment his chest is exposed, and a javelin is through him.
+And so ends the last hero of the East Goths.  They put his head upon a
+pole, and carry it round the lines to frighten the Goths.  The Goths are
+long past frightening.
+
+All day long, and all the next day, did the Germans fight on, Burgund and
+Gepid against Goth, neither giving nor taking quarter, each man dying
+where he stood, till human strength could bear up no longer, while Narses
+sat by, like an ugly Troll as he was, smiling to see the Teuton slay the
+Teuton, for the sake of their common enemy.  Then the Goths sent down to
+Narses.  They were fighting against God.  They would give in, and go
+their ways peaceably, and live with some other Teuton nations after their
+own laws.  They had had enough of Italy, poor fellows, and of the
+Nibelungen hoard.  Only Narses, that they might buy food on the journey
+back, must let them have their money, which he had taken in various towns
+of Italy.
+
+Narses agreed.  There was no use fighting more with desperate men.  They
+should go in peace.  And he kept his faith with them.  Perhaps he dared
+not break it.  He let them go, like a wounded lion crawling away from the
+hunter, up through Italy, and over the Po, to vanish.  They and their
+name became absorbed in other nations, and history knows the East Goths
+no more.
+
+So perished, by their own sins, a noble nation; and in perishing,
+destroyed utterly the Roman people.  After war and famine followed as
+usual dreadful pestilence, and Italy lay waste for years.  Henceforth the
+Italian population was not Roman, but a mixture of all races, with a most
+powerful, but an entirely new type of character.  Rome was no more
+Senatorial, but Papal.
+
+And why did these Goths perish, in spite of all their valour and
+patriotism, at the hands of mercenaries?
+
+They were enervated, no doubt, as the Vandals had been in Africa, by the
+luxurious southern climate, with its gardens, palaces, and wines.  But I
+have indicated a stronger reason already:--they perished because they
+were a slave-holding aristocracy.
+
+We must not blame them.  All men then held slaves: but the original sin
+was their ruin, though they knew it not.  It helped, doubtless, to
+debauch them; to tempt them to the indulgence of those fierce and greedy
+passions, which must, in the long run, lower the morality of
+slaveholders; and which, as Totila told them, had drawn down on them the
+anger of heaven.  But more; though they reformed their morals, and that
+nobly, under the stern teaching of affliction, that could not save them.
+They were ruined by the inherent weakness of all slaveholding states; the
+very weakness which had ruined, in past years, the Roman Empire.  They
+had no middle class, who could keep up their supplies, by exercising for
+them during war the arts of peace.  They had no lower class, whom they
+dare entrust with arms, and from whom they might recruit their hosts.
+They could not call a whole population into the field, and when beaten in
+that field, carry on, as Britain would when invaded, a guerilla warfare
+from wood to wood, and hedge to hedge, as long as a coign of
+vantage-ground was left.  They found themselves a small army of
+gentlemen, chivalrous and valiant, as slaveholders of our race have
+always been; but lessening day by day from battle and disease, with no
+means of recruiting their numbers; while below them and apart from them
+lay the great mass of the population, helpless, unarmed, degraded, ready
+to side with any or every one who would give them bread, or let them earn
+it for themselves (for slaves must eat, even though their masters
+starve), and careless of, if not even hostile to, their masters'
+interests, the moment those masters were gone to the wars.
+
+In such a case, nothing was before them, save certain defeat at last by
+an enemy who could pour in ever fresh troops of mercenaries, and who had
+the command of the seas.
+
+I may seem to be describing the case of a modern and just as valiant and
+noble a people.  I do not mention its name.  The parallel, I fear, is too
+complete, not to have already suggested itself to you.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VII--PAULUS DIACONUS
+
+
+And now I come to the final settlement of Italy and the Lombard race; and
+to do that well, I must introduce you to-day to an old chronicler--a very
+valuable, and as far as we know, faithful writer--Paul Warnefrid, alias
+Paul the Deacon.
+
+I shall not trouble you with much commentary on him; but let him, as much
+as possible, tell his own story.  He may not be always quite accurate,
+but you will get no one more accurate.  In the long run, you will know
+nothing about the matter, save what he tells you; so be content with what
+you can get.  Let him shew you what sort of an account of his nation, and
+the world in general, a Lombard gentleman and clergyman could give, at
+the end of the 8th century.
+
+You recollect the Lombards, of whom Tacitus says, 'Longobardos paucitas
+nobilitat.'  Paulus Warnefrid was one of their descendants, and his
+history carries out the exact truth of Tacitus' words.  He too speaks of
+them as a very small tribe.  He could not foresee how much the
+'nobilitat' meant.  He knew his folk as a brave semi-feudal race, who had
+conquered the greater part of Italy, and tilled and ruled it well; who
+were now conquered by Charlemagne, and annexed to the great Frank Empire,
+but without losing anything of their distinctive national character.  He
+did not foresee that they would become the architects, the merchants, the
+goldsmiths, the bankers, the scientific agriculturists of all Europe.  We
+know it.  Whenever in London or any other great city, you see a 'Lombard
+Street,' an old street of goldsmiths and bankers--or the three golden
+balls of Lombardy over a pawnbroker's shop--or in the country a field of
+rye-grass, or a patch of lucerne--recollect this wise and noble people,
+and thank the Lombards for what they have done for mankind.
+
+Paulus is a garrulous historian, but a valuable one, just because he is
+garrulous.  Though he turned monk and deacon in middle life, he has not
+sunk the man in the monk, and become a cosmopolite, like most Roman
+ecclesiastics, who have no love or hate for human beings save as they are
+friends or enemies of the pope, or their own abbey.  He has retained
+enough of the Lombard gentleman to be proud of his family, his country,
+and the old legends of his race, which he tells, half-ashamed, but with
+evident enjoyment.
+
+He was born at beautiful Friuli, with the jagged snow-line of the Alps
+behind him, and before him the sun and the sea, and the plains of Po; he
+was a courtier as a boy in Desiderius' court at Pavia, and then, when
+Charlemagne destroyed the Lombard monarchy, seems to have been much with
+the great king at Aix.  He certainly ended his life as a Benedictine
+monk, at Monte Casino, about 799; having written a Life of St. Gregory;
+Homilies long and many; the Appendix to Eutropius (the Historia Miscella,
+as it is usually called) up to Justinian's time; and above all, this
+history of the Lombards, his forefathers, which I shall take as my text.
+
+To me, and I believe to the great German antiquaries, his history seems a
+model history of a nation.  You watch the people and their story rise
+before you out of fable into fact; out of the dreary darkness of the
+unknown north, into the clear light of civilized Roman history.
+
+The first chapter is 'Of Germany, how it nourishes much people, and
+therefore many nations go forth of it.'  The reason which he gives for
+the immense population is significant.  The further to the north, and the
+colder, the more healthy he considers the world to be, and more fit for
+breeding human beings; whereas the south, being nearer to the heat of the
+sun, always abounds with diseases.  The fact really is, I presume, that
+Italy (all the south which he knew), and perhaps most of the once Roman
+empire, were during the 6th and 7th centuries pestilential.  Ruined
+cities, stopt watercourses, cultivated land falling back into marsh and
+desert, a soil too often saturated with human corpses--offered all the
+elements for pestilence.  If the once populous Campagna of Rome be now
+uninhabitable from malaria, what must it have been in Paul Warnefrid's
+time?
+
+Be that as it may, this is his theory.
+
+Then he tells us how his people were at first called Winils; and how they
+came out of Scania Insula.  Sweden is often, naturally, an island with
+the early chroniclers; only the south was known to them.  The north was
+magical, unknown, Quenland, the dwelling-place of Yotuns, Elves, Trolls,
+Scratlings, and all other uncanny inhumanities.  The Winils find that
+they are growing too many for Scanland, and they divide into three
+parties.  Two shall stay behind, and the third go out to seek their
+fortunes.  Which shall go is to be decided by lot.  The third on whom the
+lot falls choose as war-kings, two brothers, Ayo and Ibor, and with them
+their mother, Gambara, the Alruna-wife, prudent and wise exceedingly--and
+they go forth.
+
+But before Paul can go too, he has a thing or two to say, which he must
+not forget, about the wild mysterious north from which his forefathers
+came.  First how, in those very extreme parts of Germany, in a cave on
+the ocean shore, lie the seven sleepers.  How they got thither from
+Ephesus, I cannot tell, still less how they should be at once there on
+the Baltic shore, and at Ephesus--as Mohammed himself believed, and
+Edward the Confessor taught--and at Marmoutier by Tours, and probably
+elsewhere beside.  Be that as it may, there they are, the seven martyrs,
+sleeping for ever in their Roman dresses, which some wild fellow tried to
+pull off once, and had his arms withered as a punishment.  And Paul
+trusts that they will awake some day, and by their preaching save the
+souls of the heathen Wends and Finns who haunt those parts.
+
+The Teutonic knights, however, and not the seven sleepers, did that good
+work.
+
+Only their dog is not with them, it appears;--the sacred dog which
+watches them till the judgment day, when it is to go up to heaven, with
+Noah's dove, and Balaam's ass, and Alborah the camel, and all the holy
+beasts.  The dog must have been left behind at Ephesus.
+
+Then he must tell us about the Scritofinns of the Bothnia gulf; wild
+Lapps and Finns, who have now retreated before the Teutonic race.  In
+Paul Warnefrid's eyes they are little wild hopping creatures--whence they
+derive their name, he says--Scritofinns, the hopping, or scrambling
+Finns.
+
+Scrattels, Skretles, often figure in the Norse tales as hopping dwarfs,
+half magical {158}.  The Norse discoverers of America recognized the
+Skraellings in the Esquimaux, and fled from them in panic terror; till
+that furious virago Freydisa, Thorvard's wife, and Eirek the Red's
+daughter, caught up a dead man's sword, and put to flight, single-handed,
+the legion of little imps.
+
+Others, wiser, or too wise, say that Paul is wrong; that Skrikfins is the
+right name, so called from their 'screeking', screaming, and jabbering,
+which doubtless the little fellows did, loudly enough.
+
+Be that as it may, they appear to Paul (or rather to his informants,
+Wendish merchants probably, who came down to Charlemagne's court at Aix,
+to sell their amber and their furs) as hopping about, he says, after the
+rein-deer, shooting them with a little clumsy bow, and arrows tipt with
+bone, and dressing themselves in their skins.  Procopius knew these
+Scritfins too (but he has got (as usual) addled in his geography, and
+puts them in ultima Thule or Shetland), and tells us, over and above the
+reindeer-skin dresses, that the women never nursed their children, but
+went out hunting with their husbands, hanging the papoose up to a tree,
+as the Lapps do now, with a piece of deer's marrow in its mouth to keep
+it employed; and moreover, that they sacrificed their captives to a war-
+god (Mars he calls him) in cruel ugly ways.  All which we may fully
+believe.
+
+Then Paul has to tell us how in the Scritfin country there is little or
+no night in midsummer, little or no day in winter; and how the shadows
+there are exceeding long, and shorten to nothing as they reach the
+equator,--where he puts not merely Egypt, but Jerusalem.  And how on
+Christmas days a man's shadow is nine feet long in Italy, whereas at
+Totonis Villam (Thionville), as he himself has measured, it is nineteen
+feet and a half.  Because, he says, shrewdly enough, the further you go
+from the sun, the nearer the sun seems to the horizon.  Of all which if
+you answer--But this is not history: I shall reply--But it is better than
+history.  It is the history of history.  It helps you to see how the
+world got gradually known; how history got gradually to be written; how
+each man, in each age, added his little grain to the great heap of facts,
+and gave his rough explanation thereof; and how each man's outlook upon
+this wondrous world grew wider, clearer, juster, as the years rolled on.
+
+And therefore I have no objection at all to listen to Paul in his next
+chapter, concerning the two navels of the ocean, one on each side
+Britain--abysses which swallow up the water twice a day, and twice a day
+spout it up again.  Paul has seen, so he seems to say, the tide, the
+[Greek text], that inexplicable wonder of the old Greeks and Romans,
+running up far inland at the mouths of the Seine and Loire; and he has to
+get it explained somehow, before he can go forward with a clear
+conscience.  One of the navels seems to be the Mahlstrom in Norway.  Of
+the place of the other there is no doubt.  It is close to Evodia insula,
+seemingly Alderney.  For a high noble of the French told him so; he was
+sucked into it, ships and all, and only escaped by clinging to a rock.
+And after awhile the margins of that abyss were all left bare, leaving
+the Frenchman high and dry, 'palpitating so with fear,' says Paul, 'that
+he could hardly keep his seat.'  But when all the water had been sucked
+in, out and up it came pouring again, in huge mountains, and upon them
+the Frenchman's ships, to his intense astonishment, reappeared out of the
+bottomless pit; into one of which he jumped; being, like a true
+Frenchman, thoroughly master of the situation; and got safe home to tell
+Paul the deacon.  It is not quite the explanation of the tides which one
+would have wished for: but if a French nobleman of high rank will swear
+that he saw it with his own eyes, what can Paul do, in common courtesy,
+but believe him?
+
+Paul has observed, too, which is a fact, that there is a small tide in
+his own Adriatic; and suggests modestly that there may be a similar hole
+in the bottom of that sea, only a little one, the tide being very little.
+After which, 'his praelibatis,' he will return, he says, to his story.
+And so he goes back to the famous Langbard Saga, the old story, which he
+has turned out of living Teutonic verse into dead Latin prose, and calls
+De Woden et Frea quaedam ridicula fabula; but can't help for the life of
+him telling it, apologizing all the time.  How the Winils (his own folk)
+went out to fight the Wendels, many more than them in number; and how
+Gambara, the Alruna-wife, cried to Freia the goddess, and Freia told her
+that whichsoever of the two armies first greeted Woden at the sunrise
+should win.  But the Winils are far away on the war-road, and there is no
+time to send to them.  So Freia bids her take the Winil women, and dress
+them as warriors, and plait their tresses over their lips for beards, and
+cry to Woden; and Woden admires their long beards, and thinks them such
+valiant 'war-beasts,' that he grants them the victory.
+
+Then Freia tells him how he has been taken in, and the old god laughs
+till the clouds rattle again, and the Winils are called Langbardr ever
+after.
+
+But then comes in the antiquary, and says that the etymology is
+worthless, and that Langbardr means long axes--(bard=an axe)--a word
+which we keep in halbert, a hall-axe, or guard's pole-axe; and perhaps
+the antiquary is right.
+
+But again comes in a very learned man, Dr. Latham {162}, and more than
+hints that the name is derived from the Lange Borde, the long meadows by
+the side of the Elbe: and so a good story crumbles to pieces, and
+
+      'All charms do fly
+   Beneath the touch of cold philosophy.'
+
+Then follows another story, possibly from another saga.  How by reason of
+a great famine they had to leave Scoringia, the shore-land, and go into
+Mauringia, a word which Mr. Latham connects with the Merovingi, or
+Meerwing conquerors of Gaul.  Others say that it means the moorland,
+others something else.  All that they will ever find out we may see for
+ourselves already.--A little tribe of valiant fair-haired men, whether
+all Teutons, or, as Mr. Latham thinks, Sclavonians with Teuton leaders,
+still intimately connected with our own English race both by their
+language and their laws, struggling for existence on the bleak brown bogs
+and moors, sowing a little barley and flax, feeding a few rough cattle,
+breeding a few great black horses; generation after generation fighting
+their way southward, as they exhausted the barren northern soils, or
+became too numerous for their marches, or found land left waste in front
+of them by the emigration of some Suevic, Vandal, or Burgund tribe.  We
+know nothing about them, and never shall know, save that they wore white
+linen gaiters, and carried long halberts, or pole-axes, and had each an
+immortal soul in him, as dear to God as yours or mine, with immense
+unconscious capabilities, which their children have proved right well.
+
+Then comes another saga, how they met the Assipitti, of whom, whether
+they were Tacitus's Usipetes, of the Lower Rhine, or Asabiden, the
+remnant of the Asen, who went not to Scandinavia with Odin, we know not,
+and need not know; and how the Assipitti would not let them pass; and how
+they told the Lombards that they had dogheaded men in their tribe who
+drank men's blood, which Mr. Latham well explains by pointing out, in the
+Traveller's Song, a tribe of Hundings (Houndings) sons of the hound; and
+how the Lombards sent out a champion, who fought the champion of the
+Assipitti, and so gained leave to go on their way.
+
+Forward they go, toward the south-east, seemingly along the German
+marches, the debateable land between Teuton and Sclav, which would,
+mechanically speaking, be the line of least resistance.  We hear of
+Gothland--wherever that happened to be just then; of Anthaib, the land
+held by the Sclavonian Anten, and Bathaib, possibly the land held by the
+Gepidae, or remnant of the Goths who bided behind (as Wessex men still
+say), while the Goths moved forward; and then of Burgundhaib, wherever
+the Burgunds might be then.  I know not; and I will dare to say, no man
+can exactly know.  For no dates are given, and how can they be?  The
+Lombards have not yet emerged out of the dismal darkness of the north
+into the light of Roman civilization; and all the history they have are a
+few scraps of saga.
+
+At last they take a king of the family of the Gungings, Agilmund, son of
+Ayo, like the rest of the nations, says Jornandes; for they will be no
+more under duces, elective war-kings.  And then follows a fresh saga
+(which repeats itself in the myths of several nations), how a woman has
+seven children at a birth, and throws them for shame into a pond; and
+Agilmund the king, riding by, stops to see, and turns them over with his
+lance; and one of the babes lays hold thereof; and the king says, 'This
+will be a great man;' and takes him out of the pond, and calls him
+Lamissohn, 'the son of the fishpond,' (so it is interpreted;) who grows
+to be a mighty Kemper-man, and slays an Amazon.  For when they come to a
+certain river, the Amazons forbid them to pass, unless they will fight
+their she-champion; and Lamissohn swims over and fights the war-maiden,
+and slays her; and they go on and come into a large land and quiet,
+somewhere about Silesia, it would seem, and abode there a long while.
+
+Then down on them come the savage Bulgars by night, and slay king
+Agilmund, and carry off his daughter; and Lamissohn follows them, and
+defeats them with a great slaughter, and is made king; and so forth: till
+at last they have got--how we shall never know--near history and historic
+lands.  For when Odoacer and his Turklings and other confederates went up
+into Rugiland, the country north of Vienna, and destroyed the Rugians,
+and Fava their king, then the Lombards went down into the waste land of
+the Rugians, because it was fertile, and abode there certain years.
+
+Then they moved on again, we know not why, and dwelt in the open plains,
+which are called feld.  One says 'Moravia;' but that they had surely left
+behind.  Rather it is the western plain of Hungary about Comorn.  Be that
+as it may, they quarrelled there with the Heruli.  Eutropius says that
+they paid the Herules tribute for the land, and offered to pay more, if
+the Herules would not attack them.  Paul tells a wild saga, or story, of
+the Lombard king's daughter insulting a Herule prince, because he was
+short of stature: he answered by some counter-insult; and she, furious,
+had him stabbed from behind through a window as he sat with his back to
+it.  Then war came.  The Herules, old and practised warriors, trained in
+the Roman armies, despised the wild Lombards, and disdained to use armour
+against them, fighting with no clothes save girdles.  Rodulf their king,
+too certain of victory, sat playing at tables, and sent a man up a tree
+to see how the fight went, telling him that he would cut his head off if
+he said that the Herules fled; and then, touched by some secret anxiety
+as to the end, spoke the fatal words himself; and a madness from God came
+on the Herules; and when they came to a field of flax, they took the blue
+flowers for water, and spread out their arms to swim through, and were
+all slaughtered defencelessly.
+
+Then they fought with the Suevi; and their kings' daughters married with
+the kings of the Franks; and then ruled Aldwin (a name which Dr. Latham
+identifies with our English Eadwin, or Edwin, 'the noble conqueror,'
+though Grotius translates it Audwin, 'the old or auld conqueror'), who
+brought them over the Danube into Pannonia, between the Danube and the
+Drave, about the year 526.  Procopius says, that they came by a grant
+from the Emperor Justinian, who gave as wife to Aldwin a great niece of
+Dietrich the Good, carried captive with Witigis to Byzant.
+
+Thus at last they too have reached the forecourt of the Roman Empire, and
+are waiting for their turn at the Nibelungen hoard.  They have one more
+struggle, the most terrible of all; and then they will be for a while the
+most important people of the then world.
+
+The Gepidae are in Hungary before them, now a great people.  Ever since
+they helped to beat the Huns at Netad, they have been holding Attila's
+old kingdom for themselves and not attempting to move southward into the
+Empire; so fulfilling their name.
+
+There is continual desultory war; Justinian, according to Procopius'
+account, playing false with each, in order to make them destroy each
+other.  Then, once (this is Procopius' story, not Paul's) they meet for a
+great fight; and both armies run away by a panic terror; and Aldwin the
+Lombard and Thorisend the Gepid are left alone, face to face.--It is the
+hand of God, say the two wild kings--God does not mean these two peoples
+to destroy each other.  So they make a truce for two years.  Then the
+Gepidae call in Cutuguri, a Hunnic tribe, to help them; then, says
+Procopius, Aldwin, helped by Roman mercenaries, under Amalfrid the Goth,
+Theodoric's great nephew, and brother-in-law of Aldwin, has a great fight
+with the Gepidae.  But Paul knows naught of all this: with him it is not
+Aldwin, but Alboin his son, who destroys the Gepidae.  Alboin, Grotius
+translates as Albe-win, 'he who wins all:' but Dr. Latham, true to his
+opinion that the Lombards and the Angles were closely connected,
+identifies it with our AElfwine, 'the fairy conqueror.'
+
+Aldwin, Paul says, and Thorisend fought in the Asfeld,--wherever that may
+be,--and Alboin the Lombard prince slew Thorisend the Gepid prince, and
+the Gepidae were defeated with a great slaughter.
+
+Then young Alboin asked his father to let him sit at the table with him.
+No, he could not do that, by Lombard custom, till he has become son-at-
+arms to some neighbouring king.
+
+Young Alboin takes forty thanes, and goes off to Thorisend's court, as
+the guest of his enemy.  The rites of hospitality are sacred.  The king
+receives him, feasts him, seats him, the slayer of his son, in his dead
+son's place.  And as he looks on him he sighs; and at last he can contain
+no longer.  The seat, he says, I like right well: but not the man who
+sits in it.  One of his sons takes fire, and begins to insult the
+Lombards and their white gaiters.  You Lombards have white legs like so
+many brood mares.  A Lombard flashes up.  Go to the Asfeld, and you will
+see how Lombard mares can kick.  Your brother's bones are lying about
+there like any sorry nag's.  This is too much; swords are drawn; but old
+Thorisend leaps up.  He will punish the first man who strikes.  Guests
+are sacred.  Let them sit down again, and drink their liquor in peace.
+And after they have drunk, he gives Alboin his dead son's weapons, and
+lets them go in peace, like a noble gentleman.
+
+This grand old King dies in peace.  Aldwin dies likewise, and to them
+succeed their sons, Alboin and Cunimund--the latter probably the prince
+who made the jest about the brood-mares--and they two will fight the
+quarrel out.  Cunimund, says Paul, began the war--of course that is his
+story.  Alboin is growing a great man; he has married a daughter of
+Clotaire, king of the Franks: and now he takes to his alliance the Avars,
+who have just burst into the Empire, wild people who afterwards founded a
+great kingdom in the Danube lands, and they ravage Cunimund's lands.  He
+will fight the Lombards first, nevertheless: he can settle the Avars
+after.  He and his, says Paul, are slain to a man.  Alboin makes a
+drinking-cup of his skull, carries off his daughter Rosamund
+('Rosy-mouth'), and a vast multitude of captives and immense wealth.  The
+Gepidae vanish from history; to this day (says Paul) slaves either of the
+Lombards or the Huns (by whom he rather means Avars); and Alboin becomes
+the hero of his time, praised even to Paul's days in sagas, Saxon and
+Bavarian as well as Lombard, for his liberality and his glory.  We shall
+see now how he has his chance at the Nibelungen hoard.
+
+He has heard enough (as all Teutons have) of Italy, its beauty, and its
+weakness.  He has sent five thousand chosen warriors to Narses, to help
+him against Totila and the Ostrogoths; and they have told him of the fair
+land and large, with its vineyards, olive-groves, and orchards, waste by
+war and pestilence, and crying out for human beings to come and till it
+once more.
+
+There is no force left in Italy now, which can oppose him.  Hardly any
+left in the Roman world.  The plague is come; to add its horrors to all
+the other horrors of the time--the true old plague, as far as I can
+ascertain; bred, men say, from the Serbonian bog; the plague which
+visited Athens in the time of Socrates, and England in the seventeenth
+century: and after the plague a famine; woe on woe, through all the dark
+days of Justinian the demon-emperor.  The Ostrogoths, as you know, were
+extinct as a nation.  The two deluges of Franks and Allmen, which, under
+the two brothers Buccelin and Lothaire, all on foot (for the French, as
+now, were no horsemen), had rolled into Italy during the Gothic war, had
+been swallowed up, as all things were, in the fatal gulf of Italy.
+Lothaire and his army, returning laden with plunder, had rotted away like
+sheep by Lake Benacus (Garda now) of drink, and of the plague.  Buccelin,
+entrenched among his plunder-waggons by the Volturno stream in the far
+south, had waited in vain for that dead brother and his dead host, till
+Narses came on him, with his army of trained Herules and Goths; the
+Francisc axe and barbed pike had proved useless before the arrows and the
+cavalry of the Romans; and no more than five Allmen, says one, remained
+of all that mighty host.  Awful to think of: 75,000 men, they say, in one
+column, 100,000 in the other: and like water they flowed over the land;
+and like water they sank into the ground, and left no trace.
+
+And now Narses, established as exarch of Ravenna, a sort of satrap, like
+those of the Persian Emperors, and representing the Emperor of
+Constantinople, was rewarded for all his conquests and labours by
+disgrace.  Eunuch-like, he loved money, they said; and eunuch-like, he
+was harsh and cruel.  The Empress Sophia, listening too readily to court-
+slanders, bade him 'leave to men the use of arms, and come back to the
+palace, to spin among the maids.'--'Tell her,' said the terrible old imp,
+'I will spin her such a thread as she shall not unravel.'
+
+He went, superseded by Longinus; but not to Constantinople.  From Naples
+he sent (so says Paul the Deacon) to Alboin, and bade him come and try
+his fortune as king of Italy.  He sent, too, (so says old Paul) presents
+to tempt the simple Lombard men--such presents as children would like--all
+fruits which grew in Italian orchards.  Though the gold was gone, those
+were still left.  Great babies they were, these Teutons, as I told you at
+the first; and Narses knew it well, and had used them for his ends for
+many a year.
+
+Then were terrible signs seen in Italy by night; fiery armies fighting in
+the sky, and streams of blood aloft, foreshadowing the blood which should
+be shed.
+
+Sent for or not, King Alboin came; and with him all his army, and a
+mighty multitude, women, and children, and slaves; Bavarians, Gepidae,
+Bulgars, Sarmatae, Pannonians, Sueves, and Noricans; whose names (says
+Paul) remain unto this day in the names of the villages where they
+settled.  With Alboin, too, came Saxons, twenty thousand of them at the
+least, with wife and child.  And Sigebert king of the Franks put Suevic
+settlers into the lands which the Saxons had left.
+
+Alboin gave up his own Hungarian land to his friends the Avars, on the
+condition that he should have them back if he had to return.  But return
+he never did, he nor his Lombard host.  This is the end.  The last
+invasion of Italy.  The sowing, once for all, of an Italian people.  Fresh
+nations were still pressing down to the rear of the Alps, waiting for
+their turn to enter the Fairy Land--not knowing, perhaps, that nothing
+was left therein, but ashes and blood:--but their chance was over now: a
+people were going into Italy who could hold what they got.
+
+On Easter Tuesday, in the year of grace 568, they came, seemingly by the
+old road; the path of Alaric and Dietrich and the rest; the pass from
+Carniola, through which the rail runs now from Laybach to Trieste.  It
+must have been white, in those days, with the bones of nigh 200 years.
+And they found bisons, aurochsen, in the mountains, Paul says, and is not
+surprised thereat, because there are plenty of them in Hungary near by.
+An old man told him he had seen a skin in which fifteen men might lie
+side by side.  None, you must know, are left now, save a very few in the
+Lithuanian forests.  Paul goes out of his way to note this fact, and so
+shall I.
+
+Alboin left a strong guard in Friuli, and Paul's ancestor among them,
+under Gisulf his nephew, and Marphrais or master of the horse, who now
+became duke of Friuli and warden of the marches, bound to prevent the
+Avars following them into their new abode.  Then the human deluge spread
+itself slowly over the Lombard plains.  None fought with them, and none
+gainsaid; for all the land was waste.  The plague of three years before,
+and the famine which followed it had, says Paul, reduced the world into
+primaeval silence.  The villages had no inhabitants but dogs; the sheep
+were pasturing without a shepherd; the wild birds swarmed unhurt about
+the fields.  The corn was springing self-sown under the April sun, the
+vines sprouting unpruned, the lucerne fields unmown, when the great
+Lombard people flowed into that waste land, and gave to it their own
+undying name.
+
+The scanty population, worn out with misery, fled to rocks and islands in
+the lakes, and to the seaport towns; but they seem to have found the
+Lombards merciful masters, and bowed their necks meekly to the inevitable
+yoke.  The towns alone seem to have offered resistance.  Pavia Alboin
+besieged three years, and could not take.  He swore some wild oath of
+utter destruction to all within, and would have kept it.  At last they
+capitulated.  As Alboin rode in at St. John's gate, his horse slipped up;
+and could not rise, though the grooms beat him with their lance-butts.  A
+ghostly fear came on the Lombards.  'Remember, lord king, thy cruel oath,
+and cancel it; for there are Christian folk in the city.'  Alboin
+cancelled his oath, and the horse rose at once.  So Alboin spared the
+people of Pavia, and entered the palace of old Dietrich the Ostrogoth, as
+king of Italy, as far as the gates of Rome and Ravenna.
+
+And what was his end?  Such an end as he deserved; earned and worked out
+for himself.  A great warrior, he had destroyed many nations, and won a
+fair land.  A just and wise governor, he had settled North Italy on some
+rough feudal system, without bloodshed or cruelty.  A passionate savage,
+he died as savages deserve to die.  You recollect Rosamund his Gepid
+bride?  In some mad drinking-bout (perhaps cherishing still his old
+hatred of her family) he sent her her father's skull full of wine, and
+bade her drink before all.  She drank, and had her revenge.
+
+The story has become world-famous from its horror: but I suppose I must
+tell it you in its place.--How she went to Helmichis the shield-bearer,
+and he bade her get Peredeo the Kemper-man to do the deed: and how
+Peredeo intrigued with one of her bower-maidens, and how Rosamund did a
+deed of darkness, and deceived Peredeo; and then said to him, I am thy
+mistress; thou must slay thy master, or thy master thee.  And how he,
+like Gyges in old Herodotus's tale, preferred to survive; and how
+Rosamund bound the king's sword to his bedstead as he slept his mid-day
+sleep, and Peredeo did the deed; and how Alboin leapt up, and fought with
+his footstool, but in vain.  And how, after he was dead, Rosamund became
+Helmichis' leman, as she had been Peredeo's, and fled with him to
+Ravenna, with all the treasure and Alpswintha, Alboin's daughter by the
+Frankish wife; and how Longinus the exarch persuaded her to poison
+Helmichis, and marry him; and how she gave Helmichis the poisoned cup as
+he came out of the bath, and he saw by the light of her wicked eyes that
+it was poison, and made her drink the rest; and so they both fell dead.
+And then how Peredeo and the treasure were sent to the Emperor at
+Constantinople; and how Peredeo slew a great lion in the theatre; and how
+Tiberius, when he saw that he was so mighty a man of his hands, bade put
+his eyes out; and how he hid two knives in his sleeves, and slew with
+them two great chamberlains of the Emperor; and so died, like Samson,
+says old Paul, having got good weregeld for the loss of his eyes--a man
+for either eye.
+
+And old Narses died at Rome, at a great age; and they wrapt him in lead,
+and sent him to Byzant with all his wealth.  But some say that while he
+was still alive, he hid his wealth in a great cistern, and slew all who
+knew of it save one old man, and swore him never to reveal the place.  But
+after Narses' death that old man went to Constantinople to Tiberius the
+Caesar, and told him how he could not die with that secret on his mind;
+and so Tiberius got all the money, so much that it took many days to
+carry away, and gave it all to the poor, as was his wont.
+
+A myth--a fable: but significant, as one more attempt to answer the
+question of all questions in a Teuton's mind--What had become of the
+Nibelungen hoard?  What had become of all the wealth of Rome?
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE VIII--THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN
+
+
+I asked in my first lecture, 'What would become of the forest children,
+unless some kind saint or hermit took pity on them?'
+
+I used the words saint and hermit with a special purpose.  It was by the
+influence, actual or imaginary, of such, that the Teutons, after the
+destruction of the Roman empire, were saved from becoming hordes of
+savages, destroying each other by continual warfare.
+
+What our race owes, for good and for evil, to the Roman clergy, I shall
+now try to set before you.
+
+To mete out to them their due share of praise and blame is, I confess, a
+very difficult task.  It can only be fulfilled by putting oneself, as far
+as possible, in their place, and making human allowance for the
+circumstances, utterly novel and unexpected, in which they found
+themselves during the Teutonic invasions.  Thus, perhaps, we may find it
+true of some of them, as of others, that 'Wisdom is justified of all her
+children.'
+
+That is a hard saying for human nature.  Justified of her children she
+may be, after we have settled which are to be her children and which not:
+but of all her children?  That is a hard saying.  And yet was not every
+man from the beginning of the world, who tried with his whole soul to be
+right, and to do good, a child of wisdom, of whom she at least will be
+justified, whether he is justified or not?  He may have had his
+ignorances, follies, weaknesses, possibly crimes: but he served the
+purpose of his mighty mother.  He did, even by his follies, just what she
+wanted done; and she is justified of all her children.
+
+This may sound like optimism: but it also sounds like truth to any one
+who has fairly studied that fantastic page of history, the contrast
+between the old monks and our own heathen forefathers.  The more one
+studies the facts, the less one is inclined to ask, 'Why was it not done
+better?'--the more inclined to ask, 'Could it have been done better?'
+Were not the celibate clergy, from the fifth to the eighth centuries,
+exceptional agents fitted for an exceptional time, and set to do a work
+which in the then state of the European races, none else could have done?
+At least, so one suspects, after experience of their chronicles and
+legends, sufficient to make one thoroughly detest the evil which was in
+their system: but sufficient also to make one thoroughly love many of the
+men themselves.
+
+A few desultory sketches, some carefully historical, the rest as
+carefully compiled from common facts, may serve best to illustrate my
+meaning.
+
+The monk and clergyman, whether celibate or not, worked on the heathen
+generally in one of three capacities: As tribune of the people; as hermit
+or solitary prophet; as colonizer; and in all three worked as well as
+frail human beings are wont to do, in this most piecemeal world.
+
+Let us look first at the Hermits.  All know what an important part they
+play in old romances and ballads.  All are not aware that they played as
+important a part in actual history.  Scattered through all wildernesses
+from the cliffs of the Hebrides to the Sclavonian marches, they put forth
+a power, uniformly, it must be said, for good.
+
+Every one knows how they appear in the old romances.--How some Sir
+Bertrand or other, wearied with the burden of his sins, stumbles on one
+of these Einsiedler, 'settlers alone,' and talks with him; and goes on a
+wiser and a better man.  How he crawls, perhaps, out of some wild
+scuffle, 'all-to bebled,' and reeling to his saddlebow; and 'ever he went
+through a waste land, and rocks rough and strait, so that it him seemed
+he must surely starve; and anon he heard a little bell, whereat he
+marvelled; and betwixt the water and the wood he was aware of a chapel,
+and an hermitage; and there a holy man said mass, for he was a priest,
+and a great leech, and cunning withal.  And Sir Bertrand went in to him
+and told him all his case--how he fought Sir Marculf for love of the fair
+Ellinore, and how the king bade part them, and how Marculf did him open
+shame at the wineboard, and how he went about to have slain him privily,
+but could not; and then how he went and wasted Marculf's lands, house
+with byre, kine with corn, till a strong woman smote him over the head
+with a quern-stone, and all-to broke his brain-pan;' and so forth--the
+usual story of mad passion, drink, pride, revenge.
+
+'And there the holy man a-read him right godly doctrine, and shrived him,
+and gave him an oath upon the blessed Gospels, that fight he should not,
+save in his liege lord's quarrel, for a year and a day.  And there he
+abode till he was well healed, he and his horse.'
+
+Must not that wild fighting Bertrand have gone away from that place a
+wiser and a better man?  Is it a matter to be regretted, or otherwise,
+that such men as the hermit were to be found in that forest, to mend
+Bertrand's head and his morals, at the same time?  Is it a matter to be
+regretted, or otherwise, that after twenty or thirty years more of
+fighting and quarrelling and drinking, this same Sir Bertrand--finding
+that on the whole the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the
+pride of life, were poor paymasters, and having very sufficient proof, in
+the ends of many a friend and foe, that the wages of sin are death--'fell
+to religion likewise, and was a hermit in that same place, after the holy
+man was dead; and was made priest of that same chapel; and died in
+honour, having succoured many good knights, and wayfaring men'?
+
+One knows very well that it would not be right now; that it is not needed
+now.  It is childish to repeat that, when the question is, was it right
+then--or, at least, as right as was possible then?  Was it needed
+then--or, at least, the nearest thing to that which was needed?
+
+If it was, why should not wisdom be justified of all her children?
+
+One hopes that she was; for certainly, if any men ever needed to be in
+the right, lest they should be of all men most miserable, it was these
+same old hermits.  Praying and preaching continually, they lived on food
+which dogs would not eat, in dens in which dogs ought not to live.  They
+had their reasons.  Possibly they knew their own business best.  Possibly
+also they knew their neighbour's business somewhat; they knew that such
+generations as they lived in could not be taught, save by some
+extravagant example of this kind, some caricature, as it were, of the
+doctrines which were to be enforced.  Nothing less startling, perhaps,
+could have touched the dull hearts, have convinced the dull brains, of
+fierce, ignorant, and unreasoning men.
+
+Ferocity, lawlessness, rapine, cruelty, and--when they were glutted and
+debauched by the spoils of the Roman empire--sensuality, were the evils
+which were making Europe uninhabitable for decent folk, and history--as
+Milton called it--a mere battle of kites and crows.  What less than the
+example of the hermit--especially when that hermit was a delicate and
+high-born woman--could have taught men the absolute superiority of soul
+to body, of spiritual to physical force, of spiritual to physical
+pleasure, and have said to them, not in vain words, but solid acts--'All
+that you follow is not the way of life.  The very opposite to it is the
+way of life.  The wages of sin are death; and you will find them so,--in
+this life the victims of your own passions, and of the foes whom your
+crimes arouse, and in life to come of hell for ever.  But I tell you I
+have no mind to go to hell.  I have a mind to go to heaven; and I know my
+mind right well.  If the world is to be such as this, and the rulers
+thereof such as you, I will flee from you.  I will not enter into the
+congregation of sinners, neither will I cast in my lot with the
+bloodthirsty.  I will be alone with God and His universe.  I will go to
+the mountain cave or to the ocean cliff, and there, while the salt wind
+whistles through my hair, I will be stronger than you, safer than you,
+richer than you, happier than you.  Richer than you, for I shall have for
+my companion the beatific vision of God, and of all things and beings God-
+like, fair, noble, just, and merciful.  Stronger than you, because virtue
+will give me a power over the hearts of men such as your force cannot
+give you; and you will have to come to my lonely cell, and ask me to
+advise you, and teach you, and help you against the consequences of your
+own sins.  Safer than you, because God in whom I trust will protect me:
+and if not, I have still the everlasting life of heaven, which this world
+cannot give or take away.  So go your ways, fight and devour one another,
+the victims of your own lusts.  I am minded to be a good man; and to be
+that, I will give up--as you have made all other methods impossible for
+me--all which seems to make life worth having'?  Oh! instead of finding
+fault with such men; instead of, with vulturine beak, picking out the
+elements of Manichaeism, of conceit, of discontent, of what not human
+frailty and ignorance, which may have been in them, let us honour the
+enormous moral force which enabled them so to bear witness that not the
+mortal animal, but the immortal spirit, is the Man; and that when all
+which outward circumstance can give is cast away, the Man still lives for
+ever, by God, and in God.
+
+And they did teach that lesson.  They were good, while other men were
+bad; and men saw the beauty of goodness, and felt the strength of it, and
+worshipped it in blind savage admiration.  Read Roswede's Vitae Patrum
+Eremiticorum; read the legends of the hermits of the German forests; read
+Colgan's Lives of the Irish Saints; and see whether, amid all fantastic,
+incredible, sometimes immoral myths, the goodness of life of some one or
+other is not the historic nucleus, round which the myths, and the worship
+of the saint, have crystallized and developed.
+
+Take, for instance, the exquisite hymn of St. Bridget, which Colgan
+attributes to the sixth century: though it is probably much later; that
+has nothing to do with the argument:--
+
+   'Bridget, the victorious, she loved not the world;
+   She sat on it as a gull sits on the ocean;
+   She slept the sleep of a captive mother,
+   Mourning after her absent child.
+
+   She suffered not much from evil tongues;
+   She held the blessed faith of the Trinity;
+   Bridget, the mother of my Lord of Heaven,
+   The best among the sons of the Lord.
+
+   She was not querulous, nor malevolent;
+   She loved not the fierce wrangling of women;
+   She was not a backbiting serpent, or a liar;
+   She sold not the Son of God for that which passes away.
+
+   She was not greedy of the goods of this life;
+   She gave away without gall, without slackness;
+   She was not rough to wayfaring men;
+   She handled gently the wretched lepers.
+
+   She built her a town in the plains (of Kildare);
+   And dead, she is the patroness of many peoples.'
+
+I might comment much on this quotation.  I might point out how St.
+Bridget is called the mother of the Lord, and by others, the Mary of the
+Irish, the 'Automata coeli regina,' and seems to have been considered at
+times as an avatar or incarnation of the blessed Virgin.  I might more
+than hint how that appellation, as well as the calling of Christ 'the
+best of the sons of the Lord,' in an orthodox Catholic hymn, seems to
+point to the remnants of an older creed, possibly Buddhist, the
+transition whence towards Catholic Christianity was slow and imperfect.  I
+might make merry over the fact that there are many Bridgets, some say
+eleven; even as there are three or four St. Patricks; and raise learned
+doubts as to whether such persons ever existed, after that Straussian
+method of pseudo-criticism which cometh not from above, from the Spirit
+of God, nor yet indeed from below, from the sound region of fact, but
+from within, out of the naughtiness of the heart, defiling a man.  I
+might weaken, too, the effect of the hymn by going on with the rest of
+it, and making you smile at its childish miracles and portents; but I
+should only do a foolish thing, by turning your minds away from the broad
+fact that St. Bridget, or various persons who got, in the lapse of time,
+massed together under the name of St. Bridget, were eminently good women.
+
+It matters little whether these legends are historically correct.  Their
+value lies in the moral of them.  And as for their real historical
+correctness, the Straussian argument that no such persons existed,
+because lies are told of them, is, I hold, most irrational.  The
+falsehood would not have been invented unless it had started in a truth.
+The high moral character ascribed to them would never have been dreamed
+of by persons who had not seen living instances of that character.  Man's
+imagination does not create; it only reproduces and recombines its own
+experience.  It does so in dreams.  It does so, as far as the moral
+character of the saint is concerned, in the legend; and if there had not
+been persons like St. Bridget in Ireland, the wild Irish could never have
+imagined them.
+
+Therefore it matters little to a wise man, standing on the top of Croagh
+Patrick, the grandest mountain perhaps, with the grandest outlook, in
+these British isles, as he looks on the wild Irish there on pattern days,
+up among the Atlantic clouds, crawling on bare and bleeding knees round
+St. Patrick's cell,--it matters little, I say, to the wise man, whether
+St. Patrick himself owned the ancient image which is worshipped on that
+mountain peak, or the ancient bell which till late years hung in the
+sanctuary,--such a strange oblong bell as the Irish saints carried with
+them to keep off the demons--the magic bells which appear (as far as I am
+aware) in the legends of no country till you get to Tartary and the
+Buddhists;--such a bell as came (or did not come) down from heaven to St.
+Senan; such a bell as St. Fursey sent flying through the air to greet St.
+Cuanady at his devotions when he could not come himself; such a bell as
+another saint, wandering in the woods, rang till a stag came out of the
+covert, and carried his burden for him on his horns.  It matters as
+little to the wise man whether that bell belonged to St. Patrick, as
+whether all these child's dreams are dreams.  It matters little to him,
+too, whether St. Patrick did, or did not stand on that mountain peak, 'in
+the spirit and power of Elias' (after whom it was long named), fasting,
+like Elias, forty days and forty nights, wrestling with the demons of the
+storm, and the snakes of the fen, and the Peishta-more (the monstrous
+Python of the lakes), which assembled at the magic ringing of his bell,
+till he conquered not by the brute force of a Hercules and Theseus, and
+the monster-quellers of old Greece, but by the spiritual force of which
+(so the text was then applied) it is written, 'This kind cometh not out
+but by prayer and fasting,' till he smote the evil things with 'the
+golden rod of Jesus,' and they rolled over the cliff, in hideous rout,
+and perished in the Atlantic far below.  But it matters much to a wise
+man that under all these symbols (not childish at all, but most grand, to
+the man who knows the grand place of which they are told), there is set
+forth the victory of a good and beneficent man over evil, whether of
+matter or of spirit.  It matters much to him that that cell, that bell,
+that image are tokens that if not St. Patrick, some one else, at least,
+did live and worship on that mountain top, in remote primaeval times, in
+a place in which we would not, perhaps could not, endure life a week.  It
+matters much to him that the man who so dwelt there, gained such a power
+over the minds of the heathen round him, that five millions of their
+Christian descendants worship him, and God on account of him, at this
+day.
+
+St. Ita, again.  It matters little that she did not--because she could
+not--perform the miracles imputed to her.  It matters little whether she
+had or not--as I do not believe her to have had--a regularly organized
+convent of nuns in Ireland during the sixth century.  It matters little
+if the story which follows is a mere invention of the nuns in some after-
+century, in order to make a good title for the lands which they held--a
+trick but too common in those days.  But it matters much that she should
+have been such a person, that such a story as this, when told of her,
+should have gained belief:--How the tribes of Hy-Connell, hearing of her
+great holiness, came to her with their chiefs, and offered her all the
+land about her cell.  But she, not wishing to be entangled with earthly
+cares, accepted but four acres round her cell, for a garden of herbs for
+her and her nuns.  And the simple wild Irish were sad and angry, and
+said, 'If thou wilt not take it alive, thou shalt take it when thou art
+dead.  So they chose her then and there for their patroness, and she
+blessed them with many blessings, which are fulfilled unto this day; and
+when she migrated to the Lord they gave her all the land, and her nuns
+hold it to this day, the land of Hy-Connell on the east Shannon bank, at
+the roots of Luachra mountain.'
+
+What a picture!  One hopes that it may be true, for the sake of its
+beauty and its pathos.  The poor, savage, half-naked, and, I fear, on the
+authority of St. Jerome and others, now and then cannibal Celts, with
+their saffron scarfs, and skenes, and darts, and glibs of long hair
+hanging over their hypo-gorillaceous visages, coming to the prophet
+maiden, and asking her to take their land, for they could make no decent
+use of it themselves; and look after them, body and soul, for they could
+not look after themselves; and pray for them to her God, for they did not
+know how to pray to Him themselves.  If any man shall regret that such an
+event happened to any savages on this earth, I am, I confess, sorry for
+him.
+
+St. Severinus, again, whom I have mentioned to you more than once:--none
+of us can believe that he made a dead corpse (Silvinus the priest, by
+name) sit up and talk with him on its road to burial.  None of us need
+believe that he stopped the plague at Vienna by his prayers.  None of us
+need attribute to anything but his sagacity the Divine revelations
+whereby he predicted the destruction of a town for its wickedness, and
+escaped thence, like Lot, alone; or by which he discovered, during the
+famine of Vienna, that a certain rich widow had much corn hidden in her
+cellars: but there are facts enough, credible and undoubted, concerning
+St. Severinus, the apostle of Austria, to make us trust that in him, too,
+wisdom was justified of all her children.
+
+You may remark, among the few words which have been as yet said of St.
+Severinus, a destruction, a plague, and a famine.  Those words are a fair
+sample of St. Severinus's times, and of the circumstances into which he
+voluntarily threw himself.  About the middle of the fifth century there
+appears in the dying Roman province of Noricum (Austria we now call it) a
+strange gentleman, eloquent and learned beyond all, and with the
+strangest power of melting and ruling the hearts of men.  Who he is he
+will not tell, save that his name is Severinus, a right noble name
+without doubt.  Gradually it oozes out that he has been in the far East,
+through long travels and strange dangers, through many cities and many
+lands; but he will tell nothing.  He is the servant of God, come hither
+to try to be of use.  He certainly could have come for no other reason,
+unless to buy slaves; for Austria was at that time the very highway of
+the nations, the centre of the human Mahlstrom, in which Huns, Gepiden,
+Allmannen, Rugen, and a dozen wild tribes more, wrestled up and down
+round the starving and beleaguered Roman towns of that once fertile and
+happy province.  A man who went there for his own pleasure, or even
+devotion, would have been as wise as one who had built himself last
+summer a villa on the Rappahannock, or retired for private meditation to
+the orchard of Hougoumont during the battle of Waterloo.
+
+Nevertheless, there Severinus stayed till men began to appreciate him;
+and called him, and not unjustly, Saint.  Why not?  He preached, he
+taught, he succoured, he advised, he fed, he governed; he turned aside
+the raids of the wild German kings; he gained a divine power over their
+hearts; he taught them something of God and of Christ, something of
+justice and mercy; something of peace and unity among themselves; till
+the fame ran through all the Alps, and far away into the Hungarian
+marches, that there was a prophet of God arisen in the land; and before
+the unarmed man, fasting and praying in his solitary cell on the mountain
+above Vienna, ten thousand knights and champions trembled, who never had
+trembled at the sight of armed hosts.
+
+Who would deny that man the name of saint?  And who, if by that sagacity
+which comes from the combination of intellect and virtue, he sometimes
+seemed miraculously to foretell coming events, would deny him the name of
+prophet also?
+
+If St. Severinus be the type of the monk as prophet, St. Columba may
+stand as the type of the missionary monk; the good man strengthened by
+lonely meditation; but using that strength not for selfish fanaticism,
+but for the good of men; going forth unwillingly out of his beloved
+solitude, that he may save souls.  Round him, too, cluster the usual
+myths.  He drives away with the sign of the cross a monster which attacks
+him at a ford.  He expels from a fountain the devils who smote with palsy
+and madness all who bathed therein.  He sees by a prophetic spirit, he
+sitting in his cell in Ireland, a great Italian town destroyed by a
+volcano.  His friends behold a column of light rising from his head as he
+celebrates mass.  Yes; but they also tell of him, 'that he was angelical
+in look, brilliant in speech, holy in work, clear in intellect, great in
+council.'  That he 'never passed an hour without prayer, or a holy deed,
+or reading of the Scriptures (for these old monks had Bibles, and knew
+them by heart too, in spite of all that has been written to the
+contrary), that he was of so excellent a humility and charity, bathing
+his disciples' feet when they came home from labour, and carrying corn
+from the mill on his own back, that he fulfilled the precept of his
+Master, 'He that will be the greatest among you, let him be as your
+servant.'
+
+They also tell of him (and this is fact and history) how he left his
+monastery of Derm Each, 'the field of oaks,' which we call Derry, and
+went away at the risk of his life to preach to the wild Picts of
+Galloway, and founded the great monastery of Iona, and that succession of
+abbots from whom Christianity spread over the south of Scotland and north
+of England, under his great successor Aidan.
+
+Aidan has his myths likewise.  They tell of him how he stilled the sea-
+waves with holy oil; how he turned back on Penda and his Saxons the
+flames with which the heathen king was trying to burn down Bamborough
+walls.  But they tell, too (and Bede had heard it from those who had
+known Aidan in the flesh) of 'his love of peace and charity, his purity
+and humility, his mind superior to avarice or pride, his authority,
+becoming a minister of Christ, in reproving the haughty and powerful, and
+his tenderness in relieving the afflicted, and defending the poor.'  Who,
+save one who rejoiceth in evil, instead of rejoicing in the truth, will
+care to fix his eyes for a moment upon the fairy tales which surround
+such a story, as long as there shines out from among them clear and pure,
+in spite of all doctrinal errors, the grace of God, the likeness of Jesus
+Christ our Lord?
+
+Let us look next at the priest as Tribune of the people, supported
+usually by the invisible, but most potent presence of the saint, whose
+relics he kept.  One may see that side of his power in Raphael's immortal
+design of Attila's meeting with the Pope at the gates of Rome, and
+recoiling as he sees St. Peter and St. Paul floating terrible and
+threatening above the Holy City.  Is it a myth, a falsehood?  Not
+altogether.  Such a man as Attila probably would have seen them, with his
+strong savage imagination, as incapable as that of a child from
+distinguishing between dreams and facts, between the subjective and the
+objective world.  And it was on the whole well for him and for mankind,
+that he should think that he saw them, and tremble before the spiritual
+and the invisible; confessing a higher law than that of his own ambition
+and self-will; a higher power than that of his brute Tartar hordes.
+
+Raphael's design is but a famous instance of an influence which wrought
+through the length and breadth of the down-trodden and dying Roman
+Empire, through the four fearful centuries which followed the battle of
+Adrianople.  The wild licence, the boyish audacity, of the invading
+Teutons was never really checked, save by the priest and the monk who
+worshipped over the bones of some old saint or martyr, whose name the
+Teutons had never heard.
+
+Then, as the wild King, Earl, or Comes, with his wild reiters at his
+heels, galloped through the land, fighting indiscriminately his Roman
+enemies, and his Teutonic rivals--harrying, slaughtering, burning by
+field and wild--he was aware at last of something which made him pause.
+Some little walled town, built on the ruins of a great Roman city, with
+its Byzantine minster towering over the thatched roofs, sheltering them
+as the oak shelters the last night's fungus at its base.  More than once
+in the last century or two, has that same town been sacked.  More than
+once has the surviving priest crawled out of his hiding-place when the
+sound of war was past, called the surviving poor around him, dug the dead
+out of the burning ruins for Christian burial, built up a few sheds, fed
+a few widows and orphans, organized some form of orderly life out of the
+chaos of blood and ashes, in the name of God and St. Quemdeusvult whose
+bones he guards; and so he has established a temporary theocracy, and
+become a sort of tribune of the people, magistrate and father--the only
+one they have.  And now he will try the might of St. Quemdeusvult against
+the wild king, and see if he can save the town from being sacked once
+more.  So out he comes--a bishop perhaps, with priests, monks,
+crucifixes, banners, litanies.  The wild king must come no further.  That
+land belongs to no mortal man, but to St. Quemdeusvult, martyred here by
+the heathen five hundred years ago.  Some old Kaiser of Rome, or it may
+be some former Gothic king, gave that place to the saint for ever, and
+the saint will avenge his rights.  He is very merciful to those who duly
+honour him: but very terrible in his wrath if he be aroused.  Has not the
+king heard how the Count of such a place, only forty years before, would
+have carried off a maiden from St. Quemdeusvult's town; and when the
+bishop withstood him, he answered that he cared no more for the relics of
+the saint than for the relics of a dead ass, and so took the maiden and
+went?  But within a year and a day, he fell down dead in his drink, and
+when they came to lay out the corpse, behold the devils had carried it
+away, and put a dead ass in its place.
+
+All which the bishop would fully believe.  Why not?  He had no physical
+science to tell him that it was impossible.  Morally, it was in his eyes
+just, and therefore probable; while as for testimony, men were content
+with very little in those days, simply because they could get very
+little.  News progressed slowly in countries desolate and roadless, and
+grew as it passed from mouth to mouth, as it did in the Highlands a
+century ago, as it did but lately in the Indian Mutiny; till after a fact
+had taken ten years in crossing a few mountains and forests, it had
+assumed proportions utterly fantastic and gigantic.
+
+So the wild king and his wild knights pause.  They can face flesh and
+blood: but who can face the quite infinite terrors of an unseen world?
+They are men of blood too, men of evil lives; and conscience makes them
+cowards.  They begin to think that they have gone too far.  Could they
+see the saint, and make it up with him somewhat?
+
+No.  The saint they cannot see.  To open his shrine would be to commit
+the sin of Uzzah.  Palsy and blindness would be the least that would
+follow.  But the dome under which he lies all men may see; and perhaps
+the saint may listen, if they speak him fair.
+
+They feel more and more uncomfortable.  This saint, in heaven at God's
+right hand, and yet there in the dom-church--is clearly a mysterious,
+ubiquitous person, who may take them in the rear very unexpectedly.  And
+his priests, with their book-learning, and their sciences, and their
+strange dresses and chants--who knows what secret powers, magical or
+other, they may not possess?
+
+They bluster at first: being (as I have said) much of the temper and
+habits, for good and evil, of English navvies.  But they grow more and
+more uneasy, full of childish curiosity, and undefined dread.  So into
+the town they go, on promise (which they will honourably keep, being
+German men) of doing no harm to the plebs, the half Roman artisans and
+burghers who are keeping themselves alive here--the last dying remnants
+of the civilization, and luxury, and cruelty, and wickedness, of a great
+Roman colonial city; and they stare at arts and handicrafts new to them;
+and are hospitably fed by bishops and priests; and then they go,
+trembling and awkward, into the great dom-church; and gaze wondering at
+the frescoes, and the carvings of the arcades--marbles from Italy,
+porphyries from Egypt, all patched together out of the ruins of Roman
+baths, and temples, and theatres; and at last they arrive at the saint's
+shrine itself--some marble sarcophagus, most probably covered with vine
+and ivy leaves, with nymphs and satyrs, long since consecrated with holy
+water to a new and better use.  Inside that lies the saint, asleep, yet
+ever awake.  So they had best consider in whose presence they are, and
+fear God and St. Quemdeusvult, and cast away the seven deadly sins
+wherewith they are defiled; for the saint is a righteous man, and died
+for righteousness' sake; and those who rob the orphan and the widow, and
+put the fatherless to death, them he cannot abide; and them he will watch
+like an eagle of the sky, and track like a wolf of the wood, fill he
+punishes them with a great destruction.  In short, the bishop preaches to
+the king and his men a right noble and valiant sermon, calling things by
+their true names without fear or favour, and assuming, on the mere
+strength of being in the right, a tone of calm superiority which makes
+the strong armed men blush and tremble before the weak and helpless one.
+
+Yes.  Spirit is stronger than flesh.  'Meekly bend thy neck, Sicamber!'
+said St. Remigius to the great conquering King Clovis, when he stept into
+the baptismal font--(not 'Most Gracious Majesty,' or 'Illustrious Caesar,'
+or 'by the grace of God Lord of the Franks,' but Sicamber, as a
+missionary might now say Maori, or Caffre,--and yet St. Remigius's life
+was in Clovis's hand then and always),--'Burn what thou hast adored, and
+adore what thou hast burned!'  And the terrible Clovis trembled and
+obeyed.
+
+So does the wild king at the shrine of St. Quemdeusvult.  He takes his
+bracelet, or his jewel, and offers it civilly enough.  Will the bishop be
+so good as to inform the great Earl St. Quemdeusvult, that he was not
+aware of his rights, or even of his name; that perhaps he will deign to
+accept this jewel, which he took off the neck of a Roman
+General--that--that on the whole he is willing to make the amende
+honorable, as far as is consistent with the feelings of a nobleman; and
+trusts that the saint, being a nobleman too, will be satisfied therewith.
+
+After which, probably, it will appear to the wild king that this bishop
+is the very man that he wants, the very opposite to himself and his wild
+riders; a man pure, peaceable, just, and brave; possessed, too, of
+boundless learning; who can read, write, cipher, and cast nativities; who
+has a whole room full of books and parchments, and a map of the whole
+world; who can talk Latin, and perhaps Greek, as well as one of those
+accursed man-eating Grendels, a Roman lawyer, or a logothete from
+Ravenna; possessed, too, of boundless supernatural power;--Would the
+bishop be so good as to help him in his dispute with the Count Boso,
+about their respective marches in such and such a forest?  If the bishop
+could only settle that without more fighting, of course he should have
+his reward.  He would confirm to the saint and his burg all the rights
+granted by Constantine the Kaiser; and give him moreover all the meadow
+land in such and such a place, with the mills and fisheries, on service
+of a dish of trout from the bishop and his successors, whenever he came
+that way: for the trout there were exceeding good, that he knew.  And so
+a bargain would be struck, and one of those curious compromises between
+the spiritual and temporal authorities take root, of which one may read
+at length in the pages of M. Guizot, or Sir James Stephen.
+
+And after a few years, most probably, the king would express a wish to be
+baptized, at the instance of his queen who had been won over by the
+bishop, and had gone down into the font some years before; and he would
+bid his riders be baptized also; and they would obey, seeing that it
+could do them no harm, and might do them some good; and they would agree
+to live more or less according to the laws of God and common humanity;
+and so one more Christian state would be formed; one more living stone
+(as it was phrased in those days) built into the great temple of God
+which was called Christendom.
+
+So the work was done.  Can we devise any better method of doing it?  If
+not, let us be content that it was done somehow, and believe that wisdom
+is justified of all her children.
+
+We may object to the fact, that the dom-church and its organization grew
+up (as was the case in the vast majority of instances) round the body of
+a saint or martyr; we may smile at the notion of an invisible owner and
+protector of the soil: but we must not overlook the broad fact, that
+without that prestige the barbarians would never have been awed into
+humanity; without that prestige the place would have been swept off the
+face of the earth, till not one stone stood on another: and he who does
+not see what a disaster for humanity that would have been, must be
+ignorant that the civilization of Europe is the child of the towns; and
+also that our Teutonic forefathers were by profession destroyers of
+towns, and settlers apart from each other on country freeholds.  Lonely
+barbarism would have been the fate of Europe, but for the monk who
+guarded the relics of the saint within the walled burg.
+
+This good work of the Church, in the preservation and even resuscitation
+of the municipal institutions of the towns, has been discust so well and
+fully by M. Guizot, M. Sismondi, and Sir James Stephen, that I shall say
+no more about it, save to recommend you to read what they have written.  I
+go on to point out to you some other very important facts, which my ideal
+sketch exemplifies.
+
+The difference between the Clergy and the Teuton conquerors was more than
+a difference of creed, or of civilization.  It was an actual difference
+of race.  They were Romans, to whom the Teuton was a savage, speaking a
+different tongue, obeying different laws, his whole theory of the
+universe different from the Roman.  And he was, moreover, an enemy and a
+destroyer.  The Teuton was to them as a Hindoo is to us, with the
+terrible exception, that the positions were reversed; that the Teuton was
+not the conquered, but the conqueror.  It is easy for us to feel humanity
+and Christian charity toward races which we have mastered.  It was not so
+easy for the Roman priest to feel them toward a race which had mastered
+him.  His repugnance to the 'Barbarian' must have been at first intense.
+He never would have conquered it; he never would have become the willing
+converter of the heathen, had there not been in him the Spirit of God,
+and firm belief in a Catholic Church, to which all men of all races ought
+alike to belong.  This true and glorious idea, the only one which has
+ever been or ever will be able to break down the barriers of race, and
+the animal antipathy which the natural man has to all who are not of his
+own kin: this idea was the sole possession of the Roman clergy; and by it
+they conquered, because it was true, and came from God.
+
+But this very difference of race exposed the clergy to great temptations.
+They were the only civilized men left, west of Constantinople.  They
+looked on the Teuton not as a man, but as a child; to be ruled; to be
+petted when he did right, punished when he did wrong; and too often
+cajoled into doing right, and avoiding wrong.  Craft became more and more
+their usual weapon.  There were great excuses for them.  Their lives and
+property were in continual danger.  Craft is the natural weapon of the
+weak against the strong.  It seemed to them, too often, to be not only
+natural, but spiritual also, and therefore just and right.
+
+Again, the clergy were the only organic remnants of the Roman Empire.
+They claimed their privileges and lands as granted to them by past Roman
+Emperors, under the Roman law.  This fact made it their interest, of
+course, to perpetuate that Roman law, and to introduce it as far as they
+could among their conquerors, to the expulsion of the old Teutonic laws;
+and they succeeded on the whole.  Of that more hereafter.  Observe now,
+that as their rights dated from times which to the Teutons were
+pre-historic, their statements could not be checked by conquerors who
+could not even read.  Thence rose the temptation to forge; to forge
+legends, charters, dotations, ecclesiastical history of all kinds--an
+ugly and world-famous instance of which you will hear of hereafter.  To
+that temptation they yielded more and more as the years rolled on, till
+their statements on ecclesiastical history became such as no historian
+can trust, without the most plentiful corroboration.
+
+There were great excuses for them, in this matter, as in others.  They
+could not but look on the Teuton as--what in fact and law he was--an
+unjust and intrusive usurper.  They could not but look on their Roman
+congregations, and on themselves, as what in fact and law they were, the
+rightful owners of the soil.  They were but defending or recovering their
+original rights.  Would not the end justify the means?
+
+But more.  Out of this singular position grew a doctrine, which looks to
+us irrational now, but was by no means so then.  If the Church derived
+her rights from the extinct Roman Caesars, how could the Teuton
+conquerors interfere with those rights?  If she had owed allegiance to
+Constantine or Theodosius, she certainly owed none to Dietrich, Alboin,
+or Clovis.  She did not hold their lands of them; and would pay them, if
+she could avoid it, neither tax nor toll.  She did not recognize the
+sovereignty of these Teutons as 'ordained by God.'
+
+Out of this simple political fact grew up vast consequences.  The Teuton
+king was a heathen or Arian usurper.  He was not a king de jure, in the
+eyes of the clergy, till he was baptized into the Church, and then
+lawfully anointed king by the clergy.  Thus the clergy gradually became
+the makers of kings; and the power of making involved a corresponding
+power of unmaking, if the king rebelled against the Church, and so cut
+himself off from Christendom.  At best, he was one of 'the Princes of
+this world,' from whom the Church was free, absolutely in spiritual
+matters, and in temporal matters, also de jure, and therefore de facto as
+far as she could be made free.  To keep the possessions of the Church
+from being touched by profane hands, even that they might contribute to
+the common needs of the nation, became a sacred duty, a fixed idea, for
+which the clergy must struggle, anathematize, forge if need be: but
+also--to do them justice--die if need be as martyrs.  The nations of this
+world were nothing to them.  The wars of the nations were nothing.  They
+were the people of God, 'who dwelt alone, and were not reckoned among the
+nations;' their possessions were the inheritance of God: and from this
+idea, growing (as I have shewn) out of a political fact, arose the extra-
+national, and too often anti-national position, which the Roman clergy
+held for many ages, and of which the instinct, at least, lingers among
+them in many countries.  Out of it arose, too, all after struggles
+between the temporal and ecclesiastical powers.  Becket, fighting to the
+death against Henry II., was not, as M. Thierry thinks, the Anglo-Saxon
+defying the Norman.  He was the representative of the Christian Roman
+defying the Teuton, on the ground of rights which he believed to have
+existed while the Teuton was a heathen in the German forests.  Gradually,
+as the nations of Europe became really nations, within fixed boundaries,
+and separate Christian organizations, these demands of the Church became
+intolerable in reason, because unnecessary in fact.  But had there not
+been in them at the first an instinct of right and justice, they would
+never have become the fixed idea of the clerical mind; the violation of
+them the one inexpiable sin; and the defence of them (as may be seen by
+looking through the Romish Calendar) the most potent qualification for
+saintship.
+
+Yes.  The clergy believed that idea deeply enough to die for it.  St.
+Alphege at Canterbury had been, it is said, one of the first advisers of
+the ignominious payment of the Danegeld: but there was one thing which he
+would not do.  He would advise the giving up of the money of the nation:
+but the money of his church he would not give up.  The Danes might thrust
+him into a filthy dungeon: he would not take the children's bread and
+cast it unto the dogs.  They might drag him out into their husting, and
+threaten him with torture: but to the drunken cry of 'Gold!  Bishop!
+Gold!' his only answer would be--Not a penny.  He could not rob the poor
+of Christ.  And when he fell, beaten to death with the bones and horns of
+the slaughtered oxen, he died in faith; a martyr to the great idea of
+that day, that the gold of the Church did not belong to the conquerors of
+this world.
+
+But St. Alphege was an Englishman, and not a Roman.  True in the letter:
+but not in the spirit.  The priest or monk, by becoming such, more or
+less renounced his nationality.  It was the object of the Church to make
+him renounce it utterly; to make him regard himself no longer as
+Englishman, Frank, Lombard, or Goth: but as the representatives by an
+hereditary descent, considered all the more real because it was spiritual
+and not carnal, of the Roman Church; to prevent his being entangled,
+whether by marriage or otherwise, in the business of this life; out of
+which would flow nepotism, Simony, and Erastian submission to those
+sovereigns who ought to be the servants, not the lords of the Church.  For
+this end no means were too costly.  St. Dunstan, in order to expel the
+married secular priests, and replace them by Benedictine monks of the
+Italian order of Monte Casino, convulsed England, drove her into civil
+war, paralysed her monarchs one after the other, and finally left her
+exhausted and imbecile, a prey to the invading Northmen: but he had at
+least done his best to make the royal House of Cerdic, and the nations
+which obeyed that House, understand that the Church derived its rights
+not from them, but from Rome.
+
+This hereditary sense of superiority on the part of the clergy may
+explain and excuse much of their seeming flattery.  The most vicious
+kings are lauded, if only they have been 'erga servos Dei benevoli;' if
+they have founded monasteries; if they have respected the rights of the
+Church.  The clergy too often looked on the secular princes as more or
+less wild beasts, of whom neither common decency, justice, or mercy was
+to be expected; and they had too often reason enough to do so.  All that
+could be expected of the kings was, that if they would not regard man,
+they should at least fear God; which if they did, the proof of 'divine
+grace' on their part was so unexpected, as well as important, that the
+monk chroniclers praised them heartily and honestly, judging them by what
+they had, not by what they had not.
+
+Thus alone can one explain such a case as that of the monastic opinion of
+Dagobert the Second, king of the Franks.  We are told in the same
+narrative, seemingly without any great sense of incongruity, how he
+murdered his own relations and guests, and who not?--how he massacred
+9000 Bulgars to whom he had given hospitality; how he kept a harem of
+three queens, and other women so numerous that Fredegarius cannot mention
+them; and also how, accompanied by his harem, he chanted among the monks
+of St. Denis; how he founded many rich convents; how he was the friend,
+or rather pupil, of St. Arnulf of Metz, St. Omer, and above all of St.
+Eloi--whose story I recommend you to read, charmingly told, in Mr.
+Maitland's 'Dark Ages,' pp. 81-122.  The three saints were no
+hypocrites--God forbid!  They were good men and true, to whom had been
+entrusted the keeping of a wild beast, to be petted and praised whenever
+it shewed any signs of humanity or obedience.
+
+But woe to the prince, however useful or virtuous in other respects, who
+laid sacrilegious hands on the goods of the Church.  He might, like
+Charles Martel, have delivered France from the Pagans on the east, and
+from the Mussulmen on the south, and have saved Christendom once and for
+all from the dominion of the Crescent, in that great battle on the plains
+of Poitiers, where the Arab cavalry (says Isidore of Beja) broke against
+the immoveable line of Franks, like 'waves against a wall of ice.'
+
+But if, like Charles Martel, he had dared to demand of the Church taxes
+and contributions toward the support of his troops, and the salvation
+both of Church and commonweal, then all his prowess was in vain.  Some
+monk would surely see him in a vision, as St. Eucherius, Bishop of
+Orleans, saw Charles Martel (according to the Council of Kiersy), 'with
+Cain, Judas, and Caiaphas, thrust into the Stygian whirlpools and
+Acherontic combustion of the sempiternal Tartarus.'
+
+Those words, which, with slight variations, are a common formula of
+cursing appended to monastic charters against all who should infringe
+them, remind us rather of the sixth book of Virgil's AEneid than of the
+Holy Scriptures; and explain why Dante naturally chooses that poet as a
+guide through his Inferno.
+
+The cosmogony from which such an idea was derived was simple enough.  I
+give, of course, no theological opinion on its correctness: but as
+professor of Modern History, I am bound to set before you opinions which
+had the most enormous influence on the history of early Europe.  Unless
+you keep them in mind, as the fixed and absolute background of all human
+thought and action for more than 1000 years, you will never be able to
+understand the doings of European men.
+
+This earth, then, or at least the habitable part of it, was considered as
+most probably a flat plane.  Below that plane, or in the centre of the
+earth, was the realm of endless fire.  It could be entered (as by the
+Welsh knight who went down into St. Patrick's Purgatory) by certain
+caves.  By listening at the craters of volcanoes, which were its mouths,
+the cries of the tortured might be heard in the depths of the earth.
+
+In that 'Tartarus' every human being born into the world was doomed to be
+endlessly burnt alive: only in the Church, 'extra quam nulla salus,' was
+there escape from the common doom.  But to that doom, excommunication,
+which thrust a man from the pale of the Church, condemned the sinner
+afresh, with curses the most explicit and most horrible.
+
+The superior clergy, therefore, with whom the anathematizing power lay,
+believed firmly that they could, proprio motu, upon due cause shewn,
+cause any man or woman to be burned alive through endless ages.  And what
+was more, the Teutonic laity, with that intense awe of the unseen which
+they had brought with them out of the wilderness, believed it likewise,
+and trembled.  It paralysed the wisest, as well as the fiercest, that
+belief.  Instead of disgusting the kings of the earth, it gave them over,
+bound hand and foot by their own guilty consciences, into the dominion of
+the clergy; and the belief that Charles Martel was damned, only knit (as
+M. Sismondi well remarks) his descendants the Carlovingians more closely
+to the Church which possest so terrible a weapon.
+
+Whether they were right or wrong in these beliefs is a question not to be
+discussed in this chair.  My duty is only to point out to you the
+universal existence of those beliefs, and the historic fact that they
+gave the clergy a character supernatural, magical, divine, with a reserve
+of power before which all trembled, from the beggar to the king; and
+also, that all struggles between the temporal and spiritual powers, like
+that between Henry and Becket, can only be seen justly in the light of
+the practical meaning of that excommunication which Becket so freely
+employed.  I must also point out to you that so enormous a power (too
+great for the shoulders of mortal man) was certain to be, and actually
+was, fearfully abused, not only by its direct exercise, but also by
+bargaining with men, through indulgences and otherwise, for the remission
+of that punishment, which the clergy could, if they would, inflict; and
+worst of all, that out of the whole theory sprang up that system of
+persecution, in which the worst cruelties of heathen Rome were imitated
+by Christian priests, on the seemingly irrefragable ground that it was
+merciful to offenders to save them, or, if not, at least to save others
+through them, by making them feel for a few hours in this world what they
+would feel for endless ages in the next.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE IX--THE MONK A CIVILIZER
+
+
+Historians are often blamed for writing as if the History of Kings and
+Princes were the whole history of the world.  'Why do you tell us,' is
+said, 'of nothing but the marriages, successions, wars, characters, of a
+few Royal Races?  We want to know what the people, and not the princes,
+were like.  History ought to be the history of the masses, and not of
+kings.'
+
+The only answer to this complaint seems to be, that the defect is
+unavoidable.  The history of the masses cannot be written, while they
+have no history; and none will they have, as long as they remain a mass;
+ere their history begins, individuals, few at first, and more and more
+numerous as they progress, must rise out of the mass, and become persons,
+with fixed ideas, determination, conscience, more or less different from
+their fellows, and thereby leavening and elevating their fellows, that
+they too may become persons, and men indeed.  Then they will begin to
+have a common history, issuing out of each man's struggle to assert his
+own personality and his own convictions.  Till that point is reached, the
+history of the masses will be mere statistic concerning their physical
+well-being or ill-being, which (for the early ages of our race) is
+unwritten, and therefore undiscoverable.
+
+The early history of the Teutonic race, therefore, is, and must always
+remain, simply the history of a few great figures.  Of the many of the
+masses, nothing is said; because there was nothing to say.  They all ate,
+drank, married, tilled, fought, and died, not altogether brutally, we
+will hope, but still in a dull monotony, unbroken by any struggle of
+principles or ideas.  We know that large masses of human beings have so
+lived in every age, and are living so now--the Tartar hordes, for
+instance, or the thriving negroes of central Africa: comfortable folk,
+getting a tolerable living, son after father, for many generations, but
+certainly not developed enough, or afflicted enough, to have any history.
+
+I believe that the masses, during the early middle age, were very well
+off; quite as well off as they deserved; that is, earned for themselves.
+They lived in a rough way, certainly: but roughness is not discomfort,
+where the taste has not been educated.  A Red Indian sleeps as well in a
+wigwam as we in a spring bed; and the Irish babies thrive as well among
+the peat ashes as on a Brussels carpet.  Man is a very well constructed
+being, and can live and multiply anywhere, provided he can keep warm, and
+get pure water and enough to eat.  Indeed, our Teutonic fathers must have
+been comfortably off, or they could not have multiplied as they did.  Even
+though their numbers may have been overstated, the fact is patent, that
+howsoever they were slaughtered down, by the Romans or by each other,
+they rose again as out of the soil, more numerous than ever.  Again and
+again you read of a tribe being all but exterminated by the Romans, and
+in a few years find it bursting over the Pfalzgrab or the Danube, more
+numerous and terrible than before.  Never believe that a people deprest
+by cold, ill-feeding, and ill-training, could have conquered Europe in
+the face of centuries of destructive war.  Those very wars, again, may
+have helped in the long run the increase of population, and for a reason
+simple enough, though often overlooked.  War throws land out of
+cultivation; and when peace returns, the new settlers find the land
+fallow, and more or less restored to its original fertility; and so
+begins a period of rapid and prosperous increase.  In no other way can I
+explain the rate at which nations after the most desolating wars spring
+up, young and strong again, like the phoenix, from their own funeral
+pile.  They begin afresh as the tillers of a virgin soil, fattened too
+often with the ashes of burnt homesteads, and the blood of the slain.
+
+Another element of comfort may have been the fact, that in the rough
+education of the forest, only the strong and healthy children lived,
+while the weakly died off young, and so the labour-market, as we should
+say now, was never overstocked.  This is the case with our own gipsies,
+and with many savage tribes--the Red Indians, for instance--and accounts
+for their general healthiness: the unhealthy being all dead, in the first
+struggle for existence.  But then these gipsies, and the Red Indians, do
+not increase in numbers, but the contrary; while our forefathers
+increased rapidly.  On the other hand, we have, at least throughout the
+middle ages, accounts of such swarms of cripples, lepers, deformed, and
+other incapable persons, as to make some men believe that there were more
+of them, in proportion to the population, than there are now.  And it may
+have been so.  The strongest and healthiest men always going off to be
+killed in war, the weakliest only would be left at home to breed; and so
+an unhealthy population might spring up.  And again--and this is a
+curious fact--as law and order enter a country, so will the proportion of
+incapables, in body and mind, increase.  In times of war and anarchy,
+when every one is shifting for himself, only the strongest and shrewdest
+can stand.  Woe to those who cannot take care of themselves.  The fools
+and cowards, the weakly and sickly, are killed, starved, neglected, or in
+other ways brought to grief.  But when law and order come, they protect
+those who cannot protect themselves, and the fools and cowards, the
+weakly and sickly, are supported at the public expense, and allowed to
+increase and multiply as public burdens.  I do not say that this is
+wrong, Heaven forbid!  I only state the fact.  A government is quite
+right in defending all alike from the brute competition of nature, whose
+motto is--Woe to the weak.  To the Church of the middle age is due the
+preaching and the practice of the great Christian doctrine, that society
+is bound to protect the weak.  So far the middle age saw: but no further.
+For our own times has been reserved the higher and deeper doctrine, that
+it is the duty of society to make the weak strong; to reform, to cure,
+and above all, to prevent by education, by sanitary science, by all and
+every means, the necessity of reforming and of curing.
+
+Science could not do that in the middle age.  But if Science could not do
+it, Religion would at least try to do the next best thing to it.  The
+monasteries were the refuges, whither the weak escaped from the
+competition of the strong.  Thither flocked the poor, the crippled, the
+orphan, and the widow, all, in fact, who could not fight for themselves.
+There they found something like justice, order, pity, help.  Even the
+fool and the coward, when they went to the convent-door, were not turned
+away.  The poor half-witted rascal, who had not sense enough to serve the
+king, might still serve the abbot.  He would be set to drive, plough, or
+hew wood--possibly by the side of a gentleman, a nobleman, or even a
+prince--and live under equal law with them; and under, too, a discipline
+more strict than that of any modern army; and if he would not hew the
+wood, or drive the bullocks, as he ought, then the abbot would have him
+flogged soundly till he did; which was better for him, after all, than
+wandering about to be hooted by the boys, and dying in a ditch at last.
+
+The coward, too--the abbot could make him of use, even though the king
+could not.  There were, no doubt, in those days, though fewer in number
+than now, men who could not face physical danger, and the storm of the
+evil world,--delicate, nervous, imaginative, feminine characters; who,
+when sent out to battle, would be very likely to run away.  Our
+forefathers, having no use for such persons, used to put such into a bog-
+hole, and lay a hurdle over them, in the belief that they would sink to
+the lowest pool of Hela for ever more.  But the abbot had great use for
+such.  They could learn to read, write, sing, think; they were often very
+clever; they might make great scholars; at all events they might make
+saints.  Whatever they could not do, they could pray.  And the united
+prayer of those monks, it was then believed, could take heaven by storm,
+alter the course of the elements, overcome Divine justice, avert from
+mankind the anger of an offended God.  Whether that belief were right or
+wrong, people held it; and the man who could not fight with carnal
+weapons, regained his self-respect, and therefore his virtue, when he
+found himself fighting, as he held, with spiritual weapons against all
+the powers of darkness {214}.  The first light in which I wish you to
+look at the old monasteries, is as defences for the weak against the
+strong.
+
+But what has this to do with what I said at first, as to the masses
+having no history?  This:--that through these monasteries the masses
+began first to have a history; because through them they ceased to be
+masses, and became first, persons and men, and then, gradually, a people.
+That last the monasteries could not make them: but they educated them for
+becoming a people; and in this way.  They brought out, in each man, the
+sense of individual responsibility.  They taught him, whether warrior or
+cripple, prince or beggar, that he had an immortal soul, for which each
+must give like account to God.
+
+Do you not see the effect of that new thought?  Treated as slaves, as
+things and animals, the many had learnt to consider themselves as things
+and animals.  And so they had become 'a mass,' that is, a mere heap of
+inorganic units, each of which has no spring of life in itself as
+distinguished from a whole, a people, which has one bond, uniting each to
+all.  The 'masses' of the French had fallen into that state, before the
+Revolution of 1793.  The 'masses' of our agricultural labourers,--the
+'masses' of our manufacturing workmen, were fast falling into that state
+in the days of our grandfathers.  Whether the French masses have risen
+out of it, remains to be seen.  The English masses, thanks to Almighty
+God, have risen out of it; and by the very same factor by which the
+middle-age masses rose--by Religion.  The great Methodist movement of the
+last century did for our masses, what the monks did for our forefathers
+in the middle age.  Wesley and Whitfield, and many another noble soul,
+said to Nailsea colliers, Cornish miners, and all manner of drunken
+brutalized fellows, living like the beasts that perish,--'Each of
+you--thou--and thou--and thou--stand apart and alone before God.  Each
+has an immortal soul in him, which will be happy or miserable for ever,
+according to the deeds done in the body.  A whole eternity of shame or of
+glory lies in you--and you are living like a beast.'  And in proportion
+as each man heard that word, and took it home to himself, he became a new
+man, and a true man.  The preachers may have mixed up words with their
+message with which we may disagree, have appealed to low hopes and fears
+which we should be ashamed to bring into our calculations;--so did the
+monks: but they got their work done somehow; and let us thank them, and
+the old Methodists, and any man who will tell men, in whatever clumsy and
+rough fashion, that they are not things, and pieces of a mass, but
+persons, with an everlasting duty, an everlasting right and wrong, an
+everlasting God in whose presence they stand, and who will judge them
+according to their works.  True, that is not all that men need to learn.
+After they are taught, each apart, that he is a man, they must be taught,
+how to be an united people: but the individual teaching must come first;
+and before we hastily blame the individualizing tendencies of the old
+Evangelical movement, or that of the middle-age monks, let us remember,
+that if they had not laid the foundation, others could not build thereon.
+
+Besides, they built themselves, as well as they could, on their own
+foundation.  As soon as men begin to be really men, the desire of
+corporate life springs up in them.  They must unite; they must organize
+themselves.  If they possess duties, they must be duties to their fellow-
+men; if they possess virtues and graces, they must mix with their fellow-
+men in order to exercise them.
+
+The solitaries of the Thebaid found that they became selfish wild beasts,
+or went mad, if they remained alone; and they formed themselves into
+lauras, 'lanes' of huts, convents, under a common abbot or father.  The
+evangelical converts of the last century formed themselves into powerful
+and highly organized sects.  The middle-age monasteries organized
+themselves into highly artificial communities round some sacred spot,
+generally under the supposed protection of some saint or martyr, whose
+bones lay there.  Each method was good, though not the highest.  None of
+them rises to the idea of a people, having one national life, under one
+monarch, the representative to each and all of that national life, and
+the dispenser and executor of its laws.  Indeed, the artificial
+organization, whether monastic or sectarian, may become so strong as to
+interfere with national life, and make men forget their real duty to
+their king and country, in their self-imposed duty to the sect or order
+to which they belong.  The monastic organization indeed had to die, in
+many countries, in order that national life might develop itself; and the
+dissolution of the monasteries marks the birth of an united and powerful
+England.  They or Britain must have died.  An imperium in imperio--much
+more many separate imperia--was an element of national weakness, which
+might be allowed in times of peace and safety, but not in times of
+convulsion and of danger.
+
+You may ask, however, how these monasteries became so powerful, if they
+were merely refuges for the weak?  Even if they were (and they were) the
+homes of an equal justice and order, mercy and beneficence, which had few
+or no standing-places outside their walls, still, how, if governed by
+weak men, could they survive in the great battle of life?  The sheep
+would have but a poor life of it, if they set up hurdles against the
+wolves, and agreed at all events not to eat each other.
+
+The answer is, that the monasteries were not altogether tenanted by
+incapables.  The same causes which brought the low-born into the
+monasteries, brought the high-born, many of the very highest.  The same
+cause which brought the weak into the monasteries, brought the strong,
+many of the very strongest.
+
+The middle-age records give us a long list of kings, princes, nobles, who
+having done (as they held) their work in the world outside, went into
+those convents to try their hands at what seemed to them (and often was)
+better work than the perpetual coil of war, intrigue, and ambition, which
+was not the crime, but the necessary fate, of a ruler in the middle ages.
+Tired of work, and tired of life; tired too, of vain luxury and vain
+wealth, they fled to the convent, as to the only place where a man could
+get a little peace, and think of God, and his own soul; and recollected,
+as they worked with their own hands by the side of the lowest-born of
+their subjects, that they had a human flesh and blood, a human immortal
+soul, like those whom they had ruled.  Thank God that the great have
+other methods now of learning that great truth; that the work of life, if
+but well done, will teach it to them: but those were hard times, and wild
+times; and fighting men could hardly learn, save in the convent, that
+there was a God above who watched the widows' and the orphans' tears, and
+when he made inquisition for blood, forgot not the cause of the poor.
+
+Such men and women of rank brought into the convent, meanwhile, all the
+prestige of their rank, all their superior knowledge of the world; and
+became the patrons and protectors of the society; while they submitted,
+generally with peculiar humility and devotion, to its most severe and
+degrading rules.  Their higher sensibilities, instead of making them
+shrink from hardship, made them strong to endure self-sacrifices, and
+often self-tortures, which seem to us all but incredible; and the lives,
+or rather living deaths, of the noble and princely penitents of the early
+middle age, are among the most beautiful tragedies of humanity.
+
+To these monasteries, too, came the men of the very highest intellect, of
+whatsoever class.  I say, of the very highest intellect.  Tolerably
+talented men might find it worth while to stay in the world, and use
+their wits in struggling upward there.  The most talented of all would be
+the very men to see a better 'carriere ouverte aux talens' than the world
+could give; to long for deeper and loftier meditation than could be found
+in the court; for a more divine life, a more blessed death, than could be
+found in the camp and the battle-field.
+
+And so it befals, that in the early middle age the cleverest men were
+generally inside the convent, trying, by moral influence and superior
+intellect, to keep those outside from tearing each other to pieces.
+
+But these intellects could not remain locked up in the monasteries.  The
+daily routine of devotion, even of silent study and contemplation, was
+not sufficient for them, as it was for the average monk.  There was still
+a reserve of force in them, which must be up and doing; and which, in a
+man inspired by that Spirit which is the Spirit of love to man as well as
+to God, must needs expand outwards in all directions, to Christianize, to
+civilize, to colonize.
+
+To colonize.  When people talk loosely of founding an abbey for
+superstitious uses, they cannot surely be aware of the state of the
+countries in which those abbeys were founded; either primaeval forest,
+hardly-tilled common, or to be described by that terrible epithet of
+Domesday-book, 'wasta'--wasted by war.  A knowledge of that fact would
+lead them to guess that there were almost certainly uses for the abbey
+which had nothing to do with superstition; which were as thoroughly
+practical as those of a company for draining the bog of Allen, or running
+a railroad through an American forest.  Such, at least, was the case, at
+least for the first seven centuries after the fall of Rome; and to these
+missionary colonizers Europe owes, I verily believe, among a hundred
+benefits, this which all Englishmen will appreciate; that Roman
+agriculture not only revived in the countries which were once the Empire,
+but spread from thence eastward and northward, into the principal
+wilderness of the Teuton and Sclavonic races.
+
+I cannot, I think, shew you better what manner of men these
+monk-colonizers were, and what sort of work they did, than by giving you
+the biography of one of them; and out of many I have chosen that of St.
+Sturmi, founder whilome of the great abbey of Fulda, which lies on the
+central watershed of Germany, about equidistant, to speak roughly, from
+Frankfort, Cassel, Gotha, and Coburg.
+
+His life is matter of history, written by one Eigils (sainted like
+himself), who was his disciple and his friend.  Naturally told it is, and
+lovingly; but if I recollect right, without a single miracle or myth; the
+living contemporaneous picture of such a man, living in such a state of
+society, as we shall never (and happily need never) see again, but which
+is for that very reason worthy to be preserved, for a token that wisdom
+is justified of all her children.
+
+It stands at length in Pertz's admirable 'Monumenta Historica,' among
+many another like biography, and if I tell it here somewhat at length,
+readers must forgive me.
+
+Every one has heard of little king Pepin, and many may have heard also
+how he was a mighty man of valour, and cut off a lion's head at one blow;
+and how he was a crafty statesman, and first consolidated the temporal
+power of the Popes, and helped them in that detestable crime of
+overthrowing the noble Lombard kingdom, which cost Italy centuries of
+slavery and shame, and which has to be expiated even yet, it would seem,
+by some fearful punishment.
+
+But every one may not know that Pepin had great excuses--if not for
+helping to destroy the Lombards--yet still for supporting the power of
+the Popes.  It seemed to him--and perhaps it was--the only practical
+method of uniting the German tribes into one common people, and stopping
+the internecine wars by which they were tearing themselves to pieces.  It
+seemed to him--and perhaps it was--the only practical method for
+civilizing and Christianizing the still wild tribes, Frisians, Saxons,
+and Sclaves, who pressed upon the German marches, from the mouth of the
+Elbe to the very Alps.  Be that as it may, he began the work; and his son
+Charlemagne finished it; somewhat well, and again somewhat ill--as most
+work, alas! is done on earth.  Now in the days of little king Pepin there
+was a nobleman of Bavaria, and his wife, who had a son called Sturmi; and
+they brought him to St. Boniface, that he might make him a priest.  And
+the child loved St. Boniface's noble English face, and went with him
+willingly, and was to him as a son.  And who was St. Boniface?  That is a
+long story.  Suffice it that he was a man of Devon, brought up in a
+cloister at Exeter; and that he had crossed over into Frankenland, upon
+the lower Rhine, and become a missionary of the widest and loftiest aims;
+not merely a preacher and winner of souls, though that, it is said, in
+perfection; but a civilizer, a colonizer, a statesman.  He, and many
+another noble Englishman and Scot (whether Irish or Caledonian) were
+working under the Frank kings to convert the heathens of the marches, and
+carry the Cross into the far East.  They led lives of poverty and danger;
+they were martyred, half of them, as St. Boniface was at last.  But they
+did their work; and doubtless they have their reward.  They did their
+best, according to their light.  God grant that we, to whom so much more
+light has been given, may do our best likewise.  Under this great genius
+was young Sturmi trained.  Trained (as was perhaps needed for those who
+had to do such work in such a time) to have neither wife, nor child, nor
+home, nor penny in his purse; but to do all that he was bid, learn all
+that he could, and work for his living with his own hands; a life of
+bitter self-sacrifice.  Such a life is not needed now.  Possibly,
+nevertheless, it was needed then.
+
+So St. Boniface took Sturmi about with him in his travels, and at last
+handed him over to Wigbert, the priest, to prepare him for the ministry.
+'Under whom,' says his old chronicler, 'the boy began to know the Psalms
+thoroughly by heart; to understand the Holy Scriptures of Christ with
+spiritual sense; took care to learn most studiously the mysteries of the
+four Gospels, and to bury in his heart, by assiduous reading, the
+treasures of the Old and New Testament.  For his meditation was in the
+Law of the Lord day and night; profound in understanding, shrewd of
+thought, prudent of speech, fair of face, sober of carriage, honourable
+in morals, spotless in life, by sweetness, humility, and alacrity, he
+drew to him the love of all.'
+
+He grew to be a man; and in due time he was ordained priest, 'by the will
+and consent of all;' and he 'began to preach the words of Christ
+earnestly to the people;' and his preaching wrought wonders among them.
+
+Three years he preached in his Rhineland parish, winning love from all.
+But in the third year 'a heavenly thought' came into his mind that he
+would turn hermit and dwell in the wild forest.  And why?  Who can tell?
+He may, likely enough, have found celibacy a fearful temptation for a
+young and eloquent man, and longed to flee from the sight of that which
+must not be his.  And that, in his circumstances, was not a foolish wish.
+He may have wished to escape, if but once, from the noise and crowd of
+outward things, and be alone with God and Christ, and his own soul.  And
+that was not a foolish wish.  John Bunyan so longed, and found what he
+wanted in Bedford Jail, and set it down and printed it in a Pilgrim's
+Progress, which will live as long as man is man.  George Fox longed for
+it, and made himself clothes of leather which would not wear out, and
+lived in a hollow tree, till he, too, set down the fruit of his solitude
+in a diary which will live likewise as long as man is man.  Perhaps,
+again, young Sturmi longed to try for once in a way what he was worth
+upon God's earth; how much he could endure; what power he had of helping
+himself, what courage to live by his own wits, and God's mercy, on roots
+and fruits, as wild things live.  And surely that was not altogether a
+foolish wish.  At least, he longed to be a hermit; but he kept his
+longing to himself, however, till St. Boniface, his bishop, appeared; and
+then he told him all his heart.
+
+And St. Boniface said: 'Go; in the name of God;' and gave him two
+comrades, and sent him into 'the wilderness which is called Buchonia, the
+Beech Forest, to find a place fit for the servants of the Lord to dwell
+in.  For the Lord is able to provide his people a home in the desert.'
+
+So those three went into the wild forest.  And 'for three days they saw
+nought but earth and sky and mighty trees.  And they went on, praying
+Christ that He would guide their feet into the way of peace.  And on the
+third day they came to the place which is called Hersfelt (the hart's
+down?), and searched it round, and prayed that Christ would bless the
+place for them to dwell in; and then they built themselves little huts of
+beech-bark, and abode there many days, serving God with holy fastings,
+and watchings, and prayers.'
+
+Is it not a strange story? so utterly unlike anything which we see
+now;--so utterly unlike anything which we ought to see now?  And yet it
+may have been good in its time.  It looks out on us from the dim ages,
+like the fossil bone of some old monster cropping out of a quarry.  But
+the old monster was good in his place and time.  God made him and had
+need of him.  It may be that God made those three poor monks, and had
+need of them likewise.
+
+As for their purposes being superstitious, we shall be better able to
+judge of that when we have seen what they were--what sort of a house they
+meant to build to God.  As for their having self-interest in view, no
+doubt they thought that they should benefit their own souls in this life,
+and in the life to come.  But one would hardly blame them for that,
+surely?
+
+One would not blame them as selfish and sordid if they had gone out on a
+commercial speculation?  Why, then, if on a religious one?  The merchant
+adventurer is often a noble type of man, and one to whom the world owes
+much, though his hands are not always clean, nor his eye single.  The
+monk adventurer of the middle age is, perhaps, a still nobler type of
+man, and one to whom the world owes more, though his eye, too, was not
+always single, nor his hands clean.
+
+As for selfishness, one must really bear in mind that men who walked away
+into that doleful 'urwarld' had need to pray very literally 'that Christ
+would guide their feet into the way of peace;' and must have cared as
+much for their wordly interests as those who march up to the cannon's
+mouth.  Their lives in that forest were not worth twenty-four hours'
+purchase, and they knew it.  It is an ugly thing for an unarmed man,
+without a compass, to traverse the bush of Australia or New Zealand,
+where there are no wild beasts.  But it was uglier still to start out
+under the dark roof of that primaeval wood.  Knights, when they rode it,
+went armed cap-a-pie, like Sintram through the dark valley, trusting in
+God and their good sword.  Chapmen and merchants stole through it by a
+few tracks in great companies, armed with bill and bow.  Peasants
+ventured into it a few miles, to cut timber, and find pannage for their
+swine, and whispered wild legends of the ugly things therein--and
+sometimes, too, never came home.  Away it stretched from the fair
+Rhineland, wave after wave of oak and alder, beech and pine, God alone
+knew how far, into the land of night and wonder, and the infinite
+unknown; full of elk and bison, bear and wolf, lynx and glutton, and
+perhaps of worse beasts still.  Worse beasts, certainly, Sturmi and his
+comrades would have met, if they had met them in human form.  For there
+were waifs and strays of barbarism there, uglier far than any waif and
+stray of civilization, border ruffian of the far west, buccaneer of the
+Tropic keys, Cimaroon of the Panama forests; men verbiesterte, turned
+into the likeness of beasts, wildfanger, huner, ogres, wehr-wolves,
+strong thieves and outlaws, many of them possibly mere brutal maniacs;
+naked, living in caves and coverts, knowing no law but their own hunger,
+rage, and lust; feeding often on human flesh; and woe to the woman or
+child or unarmed man who fell into their ruthless clutch.  Orson, and
+such like human brutes of the wilderness, serve now to amuse children in
+fairy tales; they were then ugly facts of flesh and blood.  There were
+heathens there, too, in small colonies: heathen Saxons, cruelest of all
+the tribes; who worshipped at the Irmensul, and had an old blood-feud
+against the Franks; heathen Thuringer, who had murdered St. Kilian the
+Irishman at Wurzburg; heathen Slaves, of different tribes, who had
+introduced into Europe the custom of impaling their captives: and woe to
+the Christian priest who fell into any of their hands.  To be knocked on
+the head before some ugly idol was the gentlest death which they were
+like to have.  They would have called that martyrdom, and the gate of
+eternal bliss; but they were none the less brave men for going out to
+face it.
+
+And beside all these, and worse than all these, there were the terrors of
+the unseen world; very real in those poor monks' eyes, though not in
+ours.  There were Nixes in the streams, and Kobolds in the caves, and
+Tannhauser in the dark pine-glades, who hated the Christian man, and
+would lure him to his death.  There were fair swan-maidens and
+elf-maidens; nay, dame Venus herself, and Herodias the dancer, with all
+their rout of revellers; who would tempt him to sin, and having made him
+sell his soul, destroy both body and soul in hell.  There was Satan and
+all the devils, too, plotting to stop the Christian man from building the
+house of the Lord, and preaching the gospel to the heathen; ready to call
+up storms, and floods, and forest fires; to hurl the crag down from the
+cliffs, or drop the rotting tree on their defenceless heads--all real and
+terrible in those poor monks' eyes, as they walked on, singing their
+psalms, and reading their Gospels, and praying to God to save them, for
+they could not save themselves; and to guide them, for they knew not,
+like Abraham, whither they went; and to show them the place where they
+should build the house of the Lord, and preach righteousness, peace, and
+joy in the Holy Spirit to the heathen round.  We talk still, thank
+heaven, of heroes, and understand what that great word should mean.  But
+were not these poor monks heroes?  Knights-errant of God, doing his work
+as they best knew how.  We have a purer gospel than they: we understand
+our Bibles better.  But if they had not done what they did, where would
+have been now our gospel, and our Bible?  We cannot tell.  It was a wise
+old saw of our forefathers--'Do not speak ill of the bridge which carries
+you over.'
+
+If Sturmi had had a 'holy longing' to get into the wild wood, now he had
+a 'holy longing' to go back; and to find St. Boniface, and tell him what
+a pleasant place Hersfelt was, and the quality of the soil, and the
+direction of the watershed, and the meadows, and springs, and so forth,
+in a very practical way.  And St. Boniface answered, that the place
+seemed good enough; but that he was afraid for them, on account of the
+savage heathen Saxons.  They must go deeper into the forest, and then
+they would be safe.  So he went back to his fellow-hermits, and they made
+to themselves a canoe; and went paddling up and down the Fulda stream,
+beneath the alder boughs, 'trying the mouths of the mountain-streams, and
+landing to survey the hills and ridges,'--pioneers of civilization none
+the less because they pioneered in the name of Him who made earth and
+heaven: but they found nothing which they thought would suit the blessed
+St. Boniface, save that they stayed a little at the place which is called
+Ruohen-bah, 'the rough brook,' to see if it would suit; but it would not.
+So they went back to their birch huts to fast and pray once more.
+
+St. Boniface sent for Sturmi after awhile, probably to Maintz, to ask of
+his success; and Sturmi threw himself on his face before him; and
+Boniface raised him up, and kissed him, and made him sit by his
+side--which was a mighty honour; for St. Boniface, the penniless monk,
+was at that moment one of the most powerful men of Europe; and he gave
+Sturmi a good dinner, of which, no doubt, he stood in need; and bade him
+keep up heart, and seek again for the place which God had surely
+prepared, and would reveal in His good time.
+
+And this time Sturmi, probably wiser from experience, determined to go
+alone; but not on foot.  So he took to him a trusty ass, and as much food
+as he could pack on it; and, axe in hand, rode away into the wild wood,
+singing his psalms.  And every night, before he lay down to sleep, he cut
+boughs, and stuck them up for a ring fence round him and the ass, to the
+discomfiture of the wolves, which had, and have still, a great hankering
+after asses' flesh.  It is a quaint picture, no doubt; but let us respect
+it, while we smile at it; if we, too, be brave men.
+
+Then one day he fell into a great peril.  He came to the old road (a
+Roman one, I presume; for the Teutons, whether in England or elsewhere,
+never dreamed of making roads till three hundred years ago, but used the
+old Roman ones), which led out of the Thuringen land to Maintz.  And at
+the ford over the Fulda he met a great multitude bathing, of Sclavonian
+heathens, going to the fair at Maintz.  And they smelt so strong, the
+foul miscreants, that Sturmi's donkey backed, and refused to face them;
+and Sturmi himself was much of the donkey's mind, for they began to mock
+him (possibly he nearly went over the donkey's head), and went about to
+hurt him.
+
+'But,' says the chronicler, 'the power of the Lord held them back.'
+
+Then he went on, right thankful at having escaped with his life, up and
+down, round and round, exploring and surveying--for what purpose we shall
+see hereafter.  And at last he lost himself in the place which is called
+Aihen-loh, 'the glade of oaks;' and at night-fall he heard the plash of
+water, and knew not whether man or wild beast made it.  And not daring to
+call out, he tapped a tree-trunk with his axe (some backwoodsman's sign
+of those days, we may presume), and he was answered.  And a forester came
+to him, leading his lord's horse; a man from the Wetterau, who knew the
+woods far and wide, and told him all that he wanted to know.  And they
+slept side by side that night; and in the morning they blest each other,
+and each went his way.
+
+Yes, there were not merely kings and wars, popes and councils, in those
+old days;--there were real human beings, just such as we might meet by
+the wayside any hour, with human hearts and histories within them.  And
+we will be thankful if but one of them, now and then, starts up out of
+the darkness of twelve hundred years, like that good forester, and looks
+at us with human eyes, and goes his way again, blessing, and not unblest.
+
+And now Sturmi knew all that he needed to know; and after awhile,
+following the counsel of the forester, he came to 'the blessed place,
+long ago prepared of the Lord.  And when he saw it, he was filled with
+immense joy, and went on exulting; for he felt that by the merits and
+prayers of the holy Bishop Boniface that place had been revealed to him.
+And he went about it, and about it, half the day; and the more he looked
+on it the more he gave God thanks;' and those who know Fulda say, that
+Sturmi had reason to give God thanks, and must have had a keen eye,
+moreover, for that which man needs for wealth and prosperity, in soil and
+water, meadow and wood.  So he blessed the place, and signed it with the
+sign of the Cross (in token that it belonged thenceforth neither to
+devils nor fairies, but to his rightful Lord and Maker), and went back to
+his cell, and thence a weary journey to St. Boniface, to tell him of the
+fair place which he had found at last.
+
+And St. Boniface went his weary way, either to Paris or to Aix, to Pepin
+and Carloman, kings of the Franks; and begged of them a grant of the
+Aihen-loh, and all the land for four miles round, and had it.  And the
+nobles about gave up to him their rights of venison, and vert, and
+pasture, and pannage of swine; and Sturmi and seven brethren set out
+thither, 'in the year of our Lord 744, in the first month (April,
+presumably), in the twelfth day of the month, unto the place prepared of
+the Lord,' that they might do what?
+
+That they might build an abbey.  Yes; but the question is, what building
+an abbey meant, not three hundred, nor five hundred, but eleven hundred
+years ago--for centuries are long matters, and men and their works change
+in them.
+
+And then it meant this: Clearing the back woods for a Christian
+settlement; an industrial colony, in which every man was expected to
+spend his life in doing good--all and every good which he could for his
+fellow-men.  Whatever talent he had he threw into the common stock; and
+worked, as he was found fit to work, at farming, gardening, carpentering,
+writing, doctoring, teaching in the schools, or preaching to the heathen
+round.  In their common church they met to worship God; but also to ask
+for grace and strength to do their work, as Christianizers and civilizers
+of mankind.  What Christianity and civilization they knew (and they knew
+more than we are apt now to believe) they taught it freely; and therefore
+they were loved, and looked up to as superior beings, as modern
+missionaries, wherever they do their work even decently well, are looked
+up to now.
+
+So because the work could be done in that way, and (as far as men then,
+or now, can see) in no other way, Pepin and Carloman gave Boniface the
+glade of oaks, that they might clear the virgin forest, and extend
+cultivation, and win fresh souls to Christ, instead of fighting, like the
+kings of this world, for the land which was already cleared, and the
+people who were already Christian.
+
+In two months' time they had cut down much of the forest; and then came
+St. Boniface himself to see them, and with him a great company of
+workmen, and chose a place for a church.  And St. Boniface went up to the
+hill which is yet called Bishop's Mount, that he might read his Bible in
+peace, away from kings and courts, and the noise of the wicked world; and
+his workmen felled trees innumerable, and dug peat to burn lime withal;
+and then all went back again, and left the settlers to thrive and work.
+
+And thrive and work they did, clearing more land, building their church,
+ploughing up their farm, drawing to them more and more heathen converts,
+more and more heathen school-children; and St. Boniface came to see them
+from time to time, whenever he could get a holiday, and spent happy days
+in prayer and study, with his pupil and friend.  And ten years after,
+when St. Boniface was martyred at last by the Friesland heathens, and
+died, as he had lived, like an apostle of God, then all the folk of
+Maintz wanted to bring his corpse home to their town, because he had been
+Archbishop there.  But he 'appeared in a dream to a certain deacon, and
+said: "Why delay ye to take me home to Fulda, to my rest in the
+wilderness which God bath prepared for me?"'
+
+So St. Boniface sleeps at Fulda,--unless the French Republican armies dug
+up his bones, and scattered them, as they scattered holier things, to the
+winds of heaven.  And all men came to worship at his tomb, after the
+fashion of those days.  And Fulda became a noble abbey, with its
+dom-church, library, schools, workshops, farmsteads, almshouses, and all
+the appanages of such a place, in the days when monks were monks indeed.
+And Sturmi became a great man, and went through many troubles and
+slanders, and conquered in them all, because there was no fault found in
+him, as in Daniel of old; and died in a good old age, bewept by
+thousands, who, but for him, would have been heathens still.  And the
+Aihen-loh became rich corn-land and garden, and Fulda an abbey borough
+and a principality, where men lived in peace under mild rule, while the
+feudal princes quarrelled and fought outside; and a great literary
+centre, whose old records are now precious to the diggers among the bones
+of bygone times; and at last St. Sturmi and the Aihen-lob had so
+developed themselves, that the latest record of the Abbots of Fulda which
+I have seen is this, bearing date about 1710:--
+
+'The arms of the most illustrious Lord and Prince, Abbot of Fulda,
+Archchancellor of the most Serene Empress, Primate of all Germany and
+Gaul, and Prince of the Holy Roman Empire.'  Developed, certainly: and
+not altogether in the right direction.  For instead of the small beer,
+which they had promised St. Boniface to drink to the end of the world,
+the abbots of Fulda had the best wine in Germany, and the best table too.
+Be that as it may, to have cleared the timber off the Aihen-lob, and
+planted a Christian colony instead, was enough to make St. Sturmi hope
+that he had not read his Bible altogether in vain.
+
+Surely such men as St. Sturmi were children of wisdom, put what sense on
+the word you will.  In a dark, confused, lawless, cut-throat age, while
+everything was decided by the sword, they found that they could do no
+good to themselves, or any man, by throwing their swords into either
+scale.  They would be men of peace, and see what could be done so.  Was
+that not wise?  So they set to work.  They feared God exceedingly, and
+walked with God.  Was not that wise?  They wrought righteousness, and
+were merciful and kind, while kings and nobles were murdering around
+them; pure and temperate, while other men were lustful and drunken; just
+and equal in all their ways, while other men were unjust and capricious;
+serving God faithfully, according to their light, while the people round
+them were half or wholly heathen; content to do their work well on earth,
+and look for their reward in heaven, while the kings and nobles, the
+holders of the land, were full of insane ambition, every man trying to
+seize a scrap of ground from his neighbour, as if that would make them
+happier.  Was that not wise?  Which was the wiser, the chief killing
+human beings, to take from them some few square miles which men had
+brought into cultivation already, or the monk, leaving the cultivated
+land, and going out into the backwoods to clear the forest, and till the
+virgin soil?  Which was the child of wisdom, I ask again?  And do not
+tell me that the old monk worked only for fanatical and superstitious
+ends.  It is not so.  I know well his fanaticism and his superstition,
+and the depths of its ignorance and silliness: but he had more in him
+than that.  Had he not, he would have worked no lasting work.  He was not
+only the pioneer of civilization, but he knew that he was such.  He
+believed that all knowledge came from God, even that which taught a man
+to clear the forest, and plant corn instead; and he determined to spread
+such knowledge as he had wherever he could.  He was a wiser man than the
+heathen Saxons, even than the Christian Franks, around him; a better
+scholar, a better thinker, better handicraftsman, better farmer; and he
+did not keep his knowledge to himself.  He did not, as some tell you,
+keep the Bible to himself.  It is not so; and those who say so, in this
+generation, ought to be ashamed of themselves.  The monk knew his Bible
+well himself, and he taught it.  Those who learnt from him to read,
+learnt to read their Bibles.  Those who did not learn (of course the vast
+majority, in days when there was no printing), he taught by sermons, by
+pictures, afterward by mystery and miracle plays.  The Bible was not
+forbidden to the laity till centuries afterwards--and forbidden then,
+why?  Because the laity throughout Europe knew too much about the Bible,
+and not too little.  Because the early monks had so ingrained the mind of
+the masses, throughout Christendom, with Bible stories, Bible personages,
+the great facts, and the great doctrines, of our Lord's life, that the
+masses knew too much; that they could contrast too easily, and too
+freely, the fallen and profligate monks of the 15th and 16th centuries,
+with those Bible examples, which the old monks of centuries before had
+taught their forefathers.  Then the clergy tried to keep from the laity,
+because it testified against themselves, the very book which centuries
+before they had taught them to love and know too well.  In a word, the
+old monk missionary taught all he knew to all who would learn, just as
+our best modern missionaries do; and was loved, and obeyed, and looked on
+as a superior being, as they are.
+
+Of course he did not know how far civilization would extend.  He could
+not foretell railroads and electric telegraphs, any more than he could
+political economy, or sanitary science.  But the best that he knew, he
+taught--and did also, working with his own hands.  He was faithful in a
+few things, and God made him ruler over many things.  For out of those
+monasteries sprang--what did not spring?  They restored again and again
+sound law and just government, when the good old Teutonic laws, and the
+Roman law also, was trampled underfoot amid the lawless strife of
+ambition and fury.  Under their shadow sprang up the towns with their
+corporate rights, their middle classes, their artizan classes.  They were
+the physicians, the alms-givers, the relieving officers, the
+schoolmasters of the middle-age world.  They first taught us the great
+principle of the division of labour, to which we owe, at this moment,
+that England is what she is, instead of being covered with a horde of
+peasants, each making and producing everything for himself, and starving
+each upon his rood of ground.  They transcribed or composed all the books
+of the then world; many of them spent their lives in doing nothing but
+writing; and the number of books, even of those to be found in single
+monasteries, considering the tedious labour of copying, is altogether
+astonishing.  They preserved to us the treasures of classical antiquity.
+They discovered for us the germs of all our modern inventions.  They
+brought in from abroad arts and new knowledge; and while they taught men
+to know that they had a common humanity, a common Father in heaven taught
+them also to profit by each other's wisdom instead of remaining in
+isolated ignorance.  They, too, were the great witnesses against feudal
+caste.  With them was neither high-born nor low-born, rich nor poor:
+worth was their only test; the meanest serf entering there might become
+the lord of knights and vassals, the counsellor of kings and princes.  Men
+may talk of democracy--those old monasteries were the most democratic
+institutions the world had ever till then seen.  'A man's a man for a'
+that,' was not only talked of in them, but carried out in practice--only
+not in anarchy, and as a cloak for licentiousness: but under those
+safeguards of strict discipline, and almost military order, without which
+men may call themselves free, and yet be really only slaves to their own
+passions.  Yes, paradoxical as it may seem, in those monasteries was
+preserved the sacred fire of modern liberty, through those feudal
+centuries when all the outside world was doing its best to trample it
+out.  Remember, as a single instance, that in the Abbot's lodging at Bury
+St. Edmunds, the Magna Charta was drawn out, before being presented to
+John at Runymede.  I know what they became afterwards, better than most
+do here; too well to defile my lips, or your ears, with tales too true.
+They had done their work, and they went.  Like all things born in time,
+they died; and decayed in time; and the old order changed, giving place
+to the new; and God fulfilled himself in many ways.  But in them, too, he
+fulfilled himself.  They were the best things the world had seen; the
+only method of Christianizing and civilizing semi-barbarous Europe.  Like
+all human plans and conceptions, they contained in themselves original
+sin; idolatry, celibacy, inhuman fanaticism; these were their three roots
+of bitterness; and when they bore the natural fruit of immorality, the
+monasteries fell with a great and just destruction.  But had not those
+monasteries been good at first, and noble at first; had not the men in
+them been better and more useful men than the men outside, do you think
+they would have endured for centuries?  They would not even have
+established themselves at all.  They would soon, in those stormy times,
+have been swept off the face of the earth.  Ill used they often were,
+plundered and burnt down.  But men found that they were good.  Their own
+plunderers found that they could not do without them; and repented, and
+humbled themselves, and built them up again, to be centres of justice and
+mercy and peace, amid the wild weltering sea of war and misery.  For all
+things endure, even for a generation, only by virtue of the good which is
+in them.  By the Spirit of God in them they live, as do all created
+things; and when he taketh away their breath they die, and return again
+to their dust.
+
+And what was the original sin of them?  We can hardly say that it was
+their superstitious and partially false creed: because that they held in
+common with all Europe.  It was rather that they had identified
+themselves with, and tried to realize on earth, one of the worst
+falsehoods of that creed--celibacy.  Not being founded on the true and
+only ground of all society, family life, they were merely artificial and
+self-willed arrangements of man's invention, which could not develop to
+any higher form.  And when the sanctity of marriage was revindicated at
+the Reformation, the monasteries, having identified themselves with
+celibacy, naturally fell.  They could not partake in the Reformation
+movement, and rise with it into some higher form of life, as the laity
+outside did.  I say, they were altogether artificial things.  The Abbot
+might be called the Abba, Father, of his monks: but he was not their
+father--just as when young ladies now play at being nuns, they call their
+superior, Mother: but all the calling in the world will not make that
+sacred name a fact and a reality, as they too often find out.
+
+And celibacy brought serious evils from the first.  It induced an
+excited, hysterical tone of mind, which is most remarkable in the best
+men; violent, querulous, suspicious, irritable, credulous, visionary; at
+best more womanly than manly; alternately in tears and in raptures.  You
+never get in their writings anything of that manly calmness, which we so
+deservedly honour, and at which we all aim for ourselves.  They are
+bombastic; excited; perpetually mistaking virulence for strength, putting
+us in mind for ever of the allocutions of the Popes.  Read the writings
+of one of the best of monks, and of men, who ever lived, the great St.
+Bernard, and you will be painfully struck by this hysterical element.  The
+fact is, that their rule of life, from the earliest to the latest,--from
+that of St. Benedict of Casino, 'father of all monks,' to that of Loyola
+the Jesuit, was pitched not too low, but too high.  It was an ideal
+which, for good or for evil, could only be carried out by new converts,
+by people in a state of high religious excitement, and therefore the
+history of the monastic orders is just that of the protestant sects.  We
+hear of continual fallings off from their first purity; of continual
+excitements, revivals, and startings of new orders, which hoped to
+realize the perfection which the old orders could not.  You must bear
+this in mind, as you read mediaeval history.  You will be puzzled to know
+why continual new rules and new orders sprung up.  They were so many
+revivals, so many purist attempts at new sects.  You will see this very
+clearly in the three great revivals which exercised such enormous
+influence on the history of the 13th, the 16th and the 17th centuries,--I
+mean the rise first of the Franciscans and Dominicans, next of the
+Jesuits, and lastly of the Port Royalists.  They each professed to
+restore monachism to what it had been at first; to realize the unnatural
+and impossible ideal.
+
+Another serious fault of these monasteries may be traced to their
+artificial celibate system.  I mean their avarice.  Only one generation
+after St. Sturmi, Charlemagne had to make indignant laws against Abbots
+who tried to get into their hands the property of everybody around them:
+but in vain.  The Abbots became more and more the great landholders, till
+their power was intolerable.  The reasons are simple enough.  An abbey
+had no children between whom to divide its wealth, and therefore more
+land was always flowing in and concentrating, and never breaking up
+again; while almost every Abbot left his personalities, all his private
+savings and purchases, to his successor.
+
+Then again, in an unhappy hour, they discovered that the easiest way of
+getting rich was by persuading sinners, and weak persons, to secure the
+safety of their souls by leaving land to the Church, in return for the
+prayers and masses of monks; and that shameful mine of wealth was worked
+by them for centuries, in spite of statutes of mortmain, and other checks
+which the civil power laid on them, very often by most detestable means.
+One is shocked to find good men lending themselves to such base tricks:
+but we must recollect, that there has always been among men a public and
+a private conscience, and that these two, alas! have generally been very
+different.  It is an old saying, that 'committees have no consciences;'
+and it is too true.  A body of men acting in concert for a public purpose
+will do things which they would shrink from with disgust, if the same
+trick would merely put money into their private purses; and this is too
+often the case when the public object is a good one.  Then the end seems
+to sanctify the means, to almost any amount of chicanery.
+
+So it was with those old monks.  An abbey had no conscience.  An order of
+monks had no conscience.  A Benedictine, a Dominican, a Franciscan, who
+had not himself a penny in the world, and never intended to have one,
+would play tricks, lie, cheat, slander, forge, for the honour and the
+wealth of his order; when for himself, and in himself, he may have been
+an honest God-fearing man enough.  So it was; one more ugly fruit of an
+unnatural attempt to be not good men, but something more than men; by
+trying to be more than men, they ended by being less than men.  That was
+their sin, and that sin, when it had conceived, brought forth death.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE X--THE LOMBARD LAWS
+
+
+I have tried to shew you how the Teutonic nations were Christianized.  I
+have tried to explain to you why the clergy who converted them were,
+nevertheless, more or less permanently antagonistic to them.  I shall
+have, hereafter, to tell you something of one of the most famous
+instances of that antagonism: of the destruction of the liberties of the
+Lombards by that Latin clergy.  But at first you ought to know something
+of the manners of these Lombards; and that you may learn best by studying
+their Code.
+
+They are valuable to you, as giving you a fair specimen of the laws of an
+old Teutonic people.  You may profitably compare them with the old
+Gothic, Franco-Salic, Burgundian, Anglo-Saxon, and Scandinavian laws, all
+formed on the same primaeval model, agreeing often in minute details, and
+betokening one primaeval origin, of awful antiquity.  By studying them,
+moreover, you may gain some notion of that primaeval liberty and self-
+government, common at first to all the race, but preserved alone by
+England;--to which the descendants of these very Lombards are at this
+very moment so manfully working their way back.
+
+These laws were collected and published in writing by king Rothar, A.D.
+643, 76 years after Alboin came into Italy.  The cause, he says, was the
+continual wearying of the poor, and the superfluous exactions, and even
+violence, of the strong against those who were weak.  They are the 'laws
+of our fathers, as far as we have learnt them from ancient men, and are
+published with the counsel and consent of our princes, judges, and all
+our most prosperous army,' i.e. the barons, or freemen capable of bearing
+arms; 'and are confirmed according to the custom of our nation by
+garathinx,' that is, as far as I can ascertain from Grimm's German Law,
+by giving an earnest, garant, or warrant of the bargain.
+
+Among these Lombards, as among our English forefathers, when a man
+thingavit, i.e. donavit, a gift or bequest to any one, it was necessary,
+according to law CLXXII., to do it before gisiles, witnesses, and to give
+a garathinx, or earnest, of his bequest--a halm of straw, a turf, a cup
+of drink, a piece of money--as to this day a drover seals his bargain
+with a shilling, and a commercial traveller with a glass of liquor.
+Whether Rothar gave the garathinx to his barons, or his barons to him, I
+do not understand: but at least it is clear from the use of this one word
+that the publication of these laws was a 'social contract'--a distinct
+compact between king and people.  From all which you will perceive at
+once that these Lombards, like all Teutons, were a free people, under a
+rough kind of constitutional monarchy.  They would have greeted with
+laughter the modern fable of the divine right of kings, if by that they
+were expected to understand that the will of the king was law, or that
+the eldest son of a certain family had any God-given ipso-facto right to
+succeed his father.  Sixteen kings, says the preface, had reigned from
+Agilmund to Rothar; and seven times had the royal race been changed.  That
+the king should belong to one of the families who derived their pedigree
+from Wodin, and that a son should, as natural, succeed his father, were
+old rules: but the barons would, as all history shews, make little of
+crowning a younger son instead of an elder, if the younger were a hero,
+and the elder an 'arga'--a lazy loon; and little, also, would they make
+of setting aside the whole royal family, and crowning the man who would
+do their business best.  The king was, as this preface and these laws
+shew, the commander in chief of the exercitus, the militia, and therefore
+of every free man in the state; (for all were bound to fight when
+required).  He was also the supreme judge, the head of the executive,
+dispenser and fountain of law: but with no more power of making the law,
+of breaking the law, or of arbitrarily depriving a man of his property,
+than an English sovereign has now; and his power was quamdiu se bene
+gesserit, and no longer, as history proves in every page.
+
+The doctrine of the divine right of kings as understood in England in the
+seventeenth century, and still in some continental countries, was, as far
+as I can ascertain, invented by the early popes, not for the purpose of
+exalting the kings, but of enslaving them, and through them the nations.
+A king and his son's sons had divine 'right to govern wrong' not from
+God, but from the vicar of God and the successor of St. Peter, to whom
+God had given the dominion of the whole earth, and who had the right to
+anoint, or to depose, whomsoever he would.  Even in these old laws, we
+see that new idea obtruding itself.  'The king's heart,' says one of them
+'is in the hand of God.'  That is a text of Scripture.  What it was meant
+to mean, one cannot doubt, or by whom it was inserted.  The 'Chancellor,'
+or whoever else transcribed those laws in Latin, was, of course, a
+cleric, priest or monk.  From his hand comes the first hint of arbitrary
+power; the first small blot of a long dark stain of absolutism, which was
+to darken and deepen through centuries of tyranny and shame.
+
+But to plead the divine right of kings, in a country which has thrown off
+its allegiance to the pope, is to assert the conclusion of a syllogism,
+the major and minor premiss of which are both denied by the assertor.  The
+arguments for such a right drawn from the Old Testament, which were
+common among the high-church party from James I. to James II. and the
+Nonjurors, are really too inconsequent to require more than a passing
+smile.  How can you prove that a king has the power to make laws, from
+the history of the Jewish nation, when that very history represents it
+all through as bound by a primaeval and divinely revealed law, to which
+kings and people were alike subject?  How can you prove that the eldest
+son's eldest son has a divine right to wear the crown as 'God's
+anointed,' when the very persons to whom that title is given are
+generally either not eldest sons, or not of royal race at all?  The rule
+that the eldest son's eldest son should succeed, has been proved by
+experience to be in practice a most excellent one: but it rests, as in
+England, so in Lombardy, or Spain, or Frankreich of old time, simply upon
+the consent of the barons, and the will of the thing or parliament.
+
+There is a sentimental admiration of 'Imperialism' growing up now-a-days,
+under the pretentious titles of 'hero-worship,' and 'strong government;'
+and the British constitution is represented as a clumsy and artificial
+arrangement of the year 1688.  1688 after Christ?  1688 before Christ
+would be nearer the mark.  It is as old, in its essentials, as the time
+when not only all the Teutons formed one tribe, but when Teutons and
+Scandinavians were still united--and when that was, who dare say?  We at
+least brought the British constitution with us out of the bogs and moors
+of Jutland, along with our smock-frocks and leather gaiters, brown bills
+and stone axes; and it has done us good service, and will do, till we
+have carried it right round the world.
+
+As for these Lombard kings, they arose on this wise.  After Alboin's
+death the Lombards were for ten years under dukes, and evil times came,
+every man doing what was right in his own eyes; enlarging their frontier
+by killing the Roman landholders, and making the survivors give them up a
+portion of their lands, as Odoacer first, and the Ostrogoths next, had
+done.  At last, tired of lawlessness, dissension and weakness, and
+seemingly dreading an invasion from Childebert, king of the Franks, they
+chose a king, Autharis the son of Cleph, and called him Flavius, by which
+Roman title the Lombard kings were afterwards known.  Moreover, they
+agreed to give him (I conclude only once for all) the half of all their
+substance, to support the kingdom.  There were certain tributes
+afterwards paid into the king's treasury every three years; and certain
+fines, and also certain portions of the property of those who died
+without direct heirs, seem to have made up the revenue.  Whereon, Paul
+says, perfect peace and justice followed.
+
+Now for the laws, which were reduced into writing about sixty years
+afterwards.  The first thing that you will remark about these laws, is
+that duel, wager of battle under shield, 'diremptio causae per pugnam sub
+uno scuto,' is the earliest form of settling a lawsuit.  If you cannot
+agree, fight it out fairly, either by yourself or per campionem, a
+champion or kemper man, and God defend the right.  Then follows 'faida,'
+blood-feud, from generation to generation.  To stop which a man is
+allowed to purge himself by oath; his own and that of certain neighbours,
+twelve in general, who will swear their belief in his innocence.  This
+was common to the northern nations, and was the origin of our trial by
+jury.  If guilty, the offender has to pay the weregeld, or legal price,
+set upon the injury he has inflicted.  When the composition is paid,
+there is an end of the feud; if after taking the composition the
+plaintiff avenges himself, he has to pay it back.  Hence our system of
+fines.
+
+This method of composition by fines runs through all the Teutonic laws;
+and makes the punishment of death, at least among freemen, very rare.
+
+Punishments by stripes, by imprisonment, or by cruel or degrading
+methods, there are none.  The person of a freeman is sacred, 'Vincire et
+verberare nefas,' as Tacitus said of these Germans 600 years before.
+
+The offences absolutely punishable by death seem to be, treason against
+the king's life; cowardice in battle; concealment of robbers; mutinies
+and attempts to escape out of the realm; and therefore (under the then
+military organization) to escape from the duty of every freeman, to bear
+arms in defence of the land.
+
+More than a hundred of these laws define the different fines, or
+'weregelds,' by which each offence is to be compounded for, from 900
+solidi aurei, gold pieces, for a murder, downwards to the smallest breach
+of the peace.  Each limb has its special price.  For the loss of an eye,
+half the price of the whole man is to be paid.  A front tooth is worth
+16s., solidi aurei; their loss being a disfigurement; but a back tooth is
+worth only 8s.  A slave's tooth, on the other hand, is worth but 4s.; and
+in every case, the weregeld of a slave is much less than that of a
+freeman.
+
+The sacredness of the household, and the strong sense of the individual
+rights of property, are to be remarked.  One found in a 'court,'
+courtledge (or homestead), by night (as we say in old English), may be
+killed.  You know, I dare say, that in many Teutonic and Scandinavian
+nations the principle that a man's house is his castle was so strongly
+held that men were not allowed to enter a condemned man's house to carry
+him off to execution; but if he would not come out, could only burn the
+house over his head.  Shooting, or throwing a lance into any man's
+homestead, costs 20s.  'Oberos,' or 'curtis ruptura,' that is, making
+violent entry into a man's homestead, costs 20s. also.  Nay, merely to
+fetch your own goods out of another man's house secretly, and without
+asking leave, was likewise punished as oberos.
+
+So of personal honour.  'Schelte' or insult, for instance, to call a man
+arga, i.e. a lazy loon, is a serious offence.  If the defendant will
+confess that he said it in a passion, and will take oath that he never
+knew the plaintiff to be arga, he must still pay 12_s._; but if he will
+stand to his word, then he must fight it out by duel, sub uno scuto.
+
+The person, for the same reason, was sacred.  If a man had lain in wait
+for a freeman, 'cum virtute et solatio,' with valour and comfort, i.e.
+with armed men to back him, and had found him standing or walking simply,
+and had shamefully held him, or 'battiderit,' committed assault and
+battery on him, he must pay half the man's weregeld; the 'turpiter et
+ridiculum' being considered for a freeman as half as bad as death.  Here
+you find in private life, as well as in public, the vincire et verberare
+nefas.
+
+If, again, one had a mind to lose 80 shillings of gold, he need but to
+commit the offence of 'meerworphin,' a word which will puzzle you
+somewhat, till you find it to signify 'mare warping,' to warp, or throw
+one's neighbour off his mare or horse.
+
+A blow with the closed fist, again, costs three shillings: but one with
+the open hand, six.  The latter is an insult as well as an injury.  A
+freeman is struck with the fist, but a slave with the palm of the hand.
+Breaking a man's head costs six solidi.  But if one had broken his skull,
+then (as in the Alemannic laws) one must pay twelve shillings, and twelve
+more for each fracture up to three--after which they are not counted.  But
+a piece of bone must come out which will make a sound when thrown into a
+shield twelve feet off; which feet are to be measured by that of a man of
+middle stature.  From which strange law may be deduced, not only the
+toughness of the Lombard brain-pan, but the extreme necessity of defining
+each particular, in order to prevent subsequent disputes, followed up by
+a blood-feud, which might be handed down from father to son.  For by
+accepting the legal fine, the injured man expressly renounced his
+primaeval right of feud.
+
+Then follow some curious laws in favour of the masters of Como, Magistri
+Comacenes, who seem to have been a guild of architects, perhaps the
+original germ of the great society of free-masons--belonging, no doubt,
+to the Roman population--who were settled about the lake of Como, and
+were hired, on contract, (as the laws themselves express,) to build for
+the Lombards, who of course had no skill to make anything beyond a skin-
+tent or a log-hall.
+
+Then follow laws against incendiaries; a fine for damage by accidental
+house-fire, if the offender have carried fire more than nine feet from
+the hearth; a law against leaving a fire alight on a journey, as in the
+Australian colonies now.  Then laws to protect mills; important matters
+in those days, being unknown to the Lombards before their entrance into
+Italy.
+
+Then laws of inheritance; on which I shall remark, that natural sons, if
+free, are to have a portion of their father's inheritance; but less than
+the legitimate sons: but that a natural son born of a slave remains a
+slave, 'nisi pater liberum thingaverit.'  This cruel law was the law of
+Rome and of the Church; our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, to their honour,
+held the reverse rule.  'Semper a patre, non a matre, generationis ordo
+texitur.'  Next, it is to be remarked, that no free woman can live in
+Lombardy, or, I believe, in any Teutonic state, save under the 'mundium'
+of some one.  You should understand this word 'mund.'  Among most of the
+Teutonic races, women, slaves, and youths, at least not of age to carry
+arms, were under the mund of some one.  Of course, primarily the father,
+head of the family, and if he died, an uncle, elder brother, &c.  The
+married woman was, of course, under the mund of her husband.  He was
+answerable for the good conduct of all under his mund; he had to pay
+their fines if they offended; and he was bound, on the other hand, to
+protect them by all lawful means.
+
+This system still lingers in the legal status of women in England, for
+good and evil; the husband is more or less answerable for the wife's
+debts; the wife, till lately, was unable to gain property apart from her
+husband's control; the wife is supposed, in certain cases of law, to act
+under the husband's compulsion.  All these, and many others, are relics
+of the old system of mund for women; and that system has, I verily
+believe, succeeded.  It has called out, as no other system could have
+done, chivalry in the man.  It has made him feel it a duty and an honour
+to protect the physically weaker sex.  It has made the woman feel that
+her influence, whether in the state or in the family, is to be not
+physical and legal, but moral and spiritual; and that it therefore rests
+on a ground really nobler and deeper than that of the man.  The modern
+experiments for emancipating women from all mund, and placing them on a
+physical and legal equality with the man, may be right, and may be
+ultimately successful.  We must not hastily prejudge them.  But of this
+we may be almost certain; that if they succeed, they will cause a wide-
+spread revolution in society, of which the patent danger will be, the
+destruction of the feeling of chivalry, and the consequent brutalization
+of the male sex.
+
+Then follow laws relating to marriage and women, of which I may remark,
+that (as in Tacitus' time), the woman brings her dowry, or 'fader fee,'
+to her husband; and that the morning after the wedding she receives from
+him, if he be content with her, her morgen gap, or morning gift; which
+remains her own private property, unless she misbehaves.
+
+The honour of women, whether in fact or merely in fame, is protected by
+many severe laws, among which I shall only notice, that the calling a
+free woman 'striga' (witch) is severely punishable.  If any one does so
+who has the mund of her, except her father or brother, he loses his mund.
+
+On the whole, woman's condition seems inferior to man's on some points:
+but superior on others.  e.g. A woman's weregeld--the price of her
+life--is 1200 solidi; while the man's is only 900.  For he can defend
+himself, but she cannot.  On the other hand, if a man kill his wife, he
+pays only the 1200 solidi, and loses her dowry: but if she kill him, she
+dies.
+
+Again.  If a free man be caught thieving, up to the amount of 20 siliquae,
+beans, _i.e._ one gold piece--though Pope Gregory makes the solidus
+(aureus) 24 siliquae--he replaces the theft, and pays 80 solidi, or dies;
+and a slave one half, or dies.
+
+But if a free woman is taken in theft, she only replaces it; for she has
+suffered for her wrong-doing, and must lay it to her own shame, that she
+has tried to do 'operam indecentem,' a foul deed.  And if an aldia or
+slave-woman steals, her master replaces the theft, and pays 40 solidi,
+minus the value of the stolen goods--and beats her afterwards, I presume,
+if he chooses.
+
+And now concerning slaves, who seem to have been divided into three
+classes.
+
+The Aldius and Aldia, masculine and feminine, who were of a higher rank
+than other slaves.
+
+The Aldius could marry a free woman, while the slave marrying a free
+woman is punishable by death; and, as experimentum crucis, if an Aldius
+married an Aldia or a free woman, the children followed the father.  If
+he married a slave, the children followed the mother, and became slaves
+of his lord.
+
+The Aldius, again, may not sell his lord's land or slaves, which
+indicates that he held land and slaves under his lord.
+
+What the word means, Grimm does not seem to know.  He thinks it
+synonymous with 'litus,' of whom we hear as early as Tacitus' time, as
+one of the four classes, nobles, freemen, liti, slaves; and therefore
+libertus, a freedman.  But the word does not merely mean, it appears, a
+slave half freed by his master; but one rather hereditarily half free,
+and holding a farm under his lord.
+
+Dio, however, is said to be an old German word for a slave; and it is
+possible that aldius (a word only known, seemingly, in Lombardy) may have
+signified originally an old slave, an old Roman colonus, or peasant of
+some sort, found by the conquerors in possession of land, and allowed to
+retain, and till it, from father to son.  We, in England, had the same
+distinction between 'Laet,' or 'villains' settled on the land, glebae
+adscripti, and mere thralls or theows, slaves pure and simple.  No doubt
+such would have better terms than the mere mancipia--slaves taken in war,
+or bought--for the simple reason, that they would be agriculturists,
+practised in the Roman tillage, understanding the mysteries of
+irrigation, artificial grasses, and rotation of crops, as well as the
+culture of vines, fruit, and olives.
+
+Next to them you have different sorts of slaves; Servus massarius, who
+seems to be also rusticanus, one who takes care of his lord's 'massa' or
+farm, and is allowed a peculium, it seems, some animals of his own, which
+he may not sell, though he may give them away.  And again, servus doctus,
+an educated household slave, whose weregeld is higher than that of
+others.
+
+The laws relating to fugitive slaves seem as merciful as such things can
+be; and the Lombards have always had the credit of being kind and easy
+masters.
+
+Connected with fugitive slaves are laws about portunarii, ferrymen, who
+appear, as you know, in the old ballads as very important, and generally
+formidable men.  The fight between Von Troneg Hagen and the old ferryman
+in the Nibelungen Lied, is a famous instance of the ancient ferrymen's
+prowess.  One can easily understand how necessary strict laws were, to
+prevent these ferrymen carrying over fugitive slaves, outlaws, and indeed
+any one without due caution; for each man was bound to remain in his own
+province, that he might be ready when called on for military service; and
+a traveller to foreign parts was looked on as a deserter from his liege-
+lord and country.
+
+Then follow a great number of laws, to me both amusing and instructive,
+as giving us some glimpse of the country life of those Lombards in the
+8th century.
+
+Scattered in the vast woodlands and marshes lie small farms, enclosed by
+ditches and posts and rails, from which if you steal a rail, you are
+fined 1s., if you steal a post, 3s.  There were stake fences, which you
+must be careful in making, for if a horse stakes himself by leaping in,
+you pay nothing; but if he does so by leaping out, you pay the price of
+the horse.  Moreover, you must leave no sharp stakes standing out of the
+hedge; for if a man or beast wounds himself thereby in passing, you have
+to pay full weregeld.
+
+Walking over sown land, or sending a woman of your mundium to do so, in
+accordance with an ancient superstition, is a severe offence; so is
+injuring a vineyard, or taking more than tres uvae (bunches of grapes, I
+presume) from the vine.  Injuring landmarks cut on the trees (theclaturas
+and signaturas) or any other boundary mark, is severely punishable either
+in a slave, or in a freeman.
+
+In the vast woods range herds of swine, and in the pastures, horses,
+cared for by law; for to take a herd of swine or brood mares as pledge,
+without the king's leave, is punishable by death, or a fine of 900_s._
+Oxen or horses used to the yoke can be taken as pledge; but only by leave
+of the king, or of the schuldhais (local magistrate), on proof that the
+debtor has no other property; for by them he gets his living.  If,
+however, you find pigs routing in your enclosure, you may kill one, under
+certain restrictions, but not the 'sornpair,' sounder boar, who 'battit
+et vincit' all the other boars in the sounder (old English for herd).
+
+Rival swineherds, as is to be supposed, 'battidunt inter se,' and
+'scandalum faciunt,' often enough.  Whereon the law advises them to fight
+it out, and then settle the damage between them.
+
+Horses are cared for.  To ride another man's horse costs 2s.; to dock or
+crop him, eight-fold the damage; and so on of hurting another man's
+horse.  Moreover, if your neighbour's dog flies at you, you may hit him
+with a stick or little sword, and kill him, but if you throw a stone
+after him and kill him, you being then out of danger, you must give the
+master a new dog.
+
+Then there are quaint laws about hunting; and damage caused by wild
+beasts caught in snares or brought to bay.  A wounded stag belongs to the
+man who has wounded it for twenty-four hours: but after that to anyone.
+Tame deer, it is observable, are kept; and to kill a doe or fawn costs
+6s., to kill a buck, 12s.  Tame hawks, cranes, and swans, if taken in
+snares, cost 6s.  But any man may take flying hawks out of his
+neighbour's wood, but not out of the Gaias Regis, the king's gehage,
+haies, hedges, or enclosed parks.
+
+And now, I have but one more law to mention--would God that it had been
+in force in later centuries--
+
+'Let no one presume to kill another man's aldia or ancilla, as a striga,
+witch, which is called masca; because it is not to be believed by
+Christian minds, that a woman can eat up a live man from within; and if
+any one does so he shall pay 60s. as her price, and for his fault, half
+to her master, and half to the king.'
+
+This last strange law forces on us a serious question, one which may have
+been suggesting itself to you throughout my lecture.  If these were the
+old Teutonic laws, this the old Teutonic liberty, the respect for man as
+man, for woman as woman, whence came the opposite element?  How is it
+that these liberties have been lost throughout almost all Europe?  How is
+it that a system of law prevailed over the whole continent, up to the
+French revolution, and prevails still in too many countries, the very
+opposite of all this?
+
+I am afraid that I must answer, Mainly through the influence of the Roman
+clergy during the middle age.
+
+The original difference of race between the clergy and the Teutonic
+conquerors, which I have already pointed out to you, had a curious
+effect, which lingers to this day.  It placed the Church in antagonism,
+more or less open, to the civil administration of justice.  The criminal
+was looked on by the priest rather as a sufferer to be delivered, than an
+offender to be punished.  All who are conversant with the lives of saints
+must recollect cases in which the saint performs even miracles on behalf
+of the condemned.  Mediaeval tales are full of instances of the same
+feeling which prompted the Italian brigands, even in our own times, to
+carry a leaden saint's image in his hat as a safeguard.  In an old French
+fabliau, for instance, we read how a certain highway-robber was always
+careful to address his prayers to the Blessed Virgin, before going out to
+murder and steal; and found the practice pay him well.  For when he was
+taken and hanged, our Lady put her 'mains blanches' under his feet, and
+supported him invisibly for a whole day, till the executioner, finding it
+impossible to kill him, was forced to let him retire peaceably into a
+monastery, where he lived and died devoutly.  We may laugh at such
+fancies; or express, if we will, our abhorrence of their immorality: but
+it will be more useful to examine into the causes which produced them.
+They seem to have been twofold.  In the first place, the Church did not
+look on the Teutonic laws, whether Frank, Burgund, Goth or Lombard, as
+law at all.  Her law, whether ecclesiastical or civil, was formed on the
+Roman model; and by it alone she wished herself, and those who were under
+her protection, to be judged.  Next--and this count is altogether to her
+honour--law, such as it was, was too often administered, especially by
+the Franks, capriciously and brutally; while the servile population,
+always the great majority, can hardly be said to have been under the
+protection of law at all.  No one can read the pages of Fredegarius, or
+Gregory of Tours, without seeing that there must have been cases weekly,
+even daily, which called on the clergy, in the name of justice and
+humanity, to deliver if possible, the poor from him that spoiled him;
+which excused fully the rise of the right of sanctuary, and of benefit of
+clergy, afterwards so much abused; which made it a pious duty in prelates
+to work themselves into power at court, and there, as the 'Chancellors'
+of princes, try to get something like regular justice done; and naturally
+enough, to remodel the laws of each nation on the time-honoured and
+scientific Roman form.  Nevertheless, the antagonism of the Church to the
+national and secular law remained for centuries.  It died out first
+perhaps, in England, after the signature of Magna Charta.  For then the
+English prelates began to take up that truly Protestant and national
+attitude which issued in the great Reformation: but it lingers still in
+Ireland and in Italy.  It lingered in France up to the French revolution,
+as may be seen notably in the account of the execution of the Marquise de
+Brinvilliers, by the priest who attended her.  Horror at her atrocious
+crimes is quite swallowed up, in the mind of the good father, by sympathy
+with her suffering; and the mob snatch her bones from the funeral pile,
+and keep them as the relics of a saint.
+
+But more.  While the Roman clergy did real good to Europe, in preserving
+the scientific elements of Roman law, they did harm by preserving
+therewith other elements--Roman chicane, and Roman cruelty.  In that
+respect, as in others, 'Rome conquered her conquerors;' and the
+descendants of those Roman lawyers, whom the honest Teutons called
+adders, and as adders killed them down, destroyed, in course of time,
+Teutonic freedom.
+
+But those descendants were, alas! the clergy.  Weak, they began early to
+adopt those arms of quibbling and craft, which religious men too often
+fancy are the proper arms of 'the saints' against 'the world.'  Holding
+human nature in suspicion and contempt, they early gave way to the maxim
+of the savage, that every one is likely to be guilty till proved
+innocent, and therefore licensed the stupid brutalities of torture to
+extract confession.  Holding self-degradation to be a virtue, and
+independence as a carnal vice; glorying in being slaves themselves, till
+to become, under the name of holy obedience, 'perinde ac cadaver,' was
+the ideal of a good monk; and accustomed, themselves, to degrading
+corporal punishment; they did not shrink from inflicting, even on boys
+and women, tortures as dastardly as indecent.  Looking on the world, and
+on the future of the human race, through a medium compared with which the
+darkest fancies of a modern fanatic are bright and clear, they did not
+shrink from inflicting penalties, the very mention of which makes the
+blood run cold.  Suspecting, if not alternately envying and despising,
+all women who were not nuns; writing openly of the whole sex (until
+unsexed) as the snare and curse of mankind; and possessed by a Manichaean
+belief in the power and presence of innumerable demons, whose especial
+victims were women; they erected witch-hunting into a science; they
+pandered to, and actually formalized, and justified on scientific
+grounds, the most cruel and cowardly superstitions of the mob; and again
+and again raised literal crusades against women, torturing, exposing,
+burning, young and old, not merely in the witch-mania of the 17th
+century, but through the whole middle age.  It is a detestable page of
+history.  I ask those who may think my statement exaggerated, to consult
+the original authorities.  Let them contrast Rothar's law about the
+impossibility of witchcraft, with the pages of the Malleus Maleficarum,
+Nider's Fornicarium, or Delrio the Jesuit, and see for themselves who
+were the false teachers.  And if they be told, that the cruelties of the
+Inquisition were only those in vogue according to the secular law of the
+day, let them recollect that the formulizers of that law were none other
+than the celibate Roman clergy.
+
+I do not deny that there was in all this a just, though a terrible,
+Nemesis.  What was the essential fault of these Lombard laws--indeed of
+all the Teutonic codes?  This--that there was one law for the free man,
+another for the slave.  Ecclesiastical dominion was necessary, to make
+one law for all classes, even though it were a law of common slavery.  As
+the free had done to the slave, even so, and far worse, would the Roman
+clergy do to them.  The Albigense persecutors, burning sixty ladies in
+one day; Conrad of Marpurg scourging his own sovereign, St. Elizabeth;
+shaving the Count of Saiym's head; and burning noble ladies almost
+without trial; Sprenger and his compeers, offering up female hecatombs of
+the highest blood thoughout Germany; English bishops burning in
+Smithfield Anne Askew, the hapless court-beauty, and her fellow-courtier
+Mr. Lascelles, just as if they had been Essex or Berkshire peasants;--all
+these evildoers were welding the different classes of the European
+nations, by a community of suffering, into nations; into the belief that
+free and slave had one blood, one humanity, one conscience, one capacity
+of suffering; and at last, one capacity of rebelling, and making common
+cause, high and low alike, against him who reigned in Italy under the
+'Romani nominis umbram.'
+
+And if our English law, our English ideas of justice and mercy, have
+retained, more than most European codes, the freedom, the truthfulness,
+the kindliness, of the old Teutonic laws, we owe it to the fact, that
+England escaped, more than any other land, the taint of effete Roman
+civilization; that she therefore first of the lands, in the 12th century,
+rebelled against, and first of them, in the 16th century, threw off, the
+Ultramontane yoke.
+
+And surely it will be so, in due time, with the descendants of these very
+Lombards.  We have seen them in these very years arise out of the dust
+and shame of centuries, and determine to be Lombards once again.  We have
+seen a hero arise among them of the true old Teuton stamp, bearing
+worthily the name which his forefathers brought over the Alps with
+Alboin--Garibald, the 'bold in war.'  May they succeed in the same noble
+struggle as that in which we succeeded, and returning, not in letter, but
+in spirit, to the old laws of Rothar and their free forefathers, become
+the leading race of a free and united Italy!
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XI--THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS
+
+
+'Our Lady the Mother of God, even Virgin Maria, together with us,
+protests to you, adjuring you with great obligations, and admonishes and
+commands you, and with her the thrones, dominations, all the heavenly
+angels, the martyrs and confessors of Christ, on behalf of the Roman
+city, committed to us by the Lord God, and the sheep of the Lord dwelling
+in it.  Defend and free it speedily from the hands of the persecuting
+Lombards, lest my body which suffered torments for Christ, and my home in
+which it rests by the command of God, be contaminated by the people of
+the Lombards, who are guilty of such iniquitous perjury, and are proud
+transgressors of the divine scripture.  So will I at the day of judgment
+reward you with my patronage, and prepare for you in the kingdom of God
+most shining and glorious tabernacles, promising you the reward of
+eternal retribution, and the infinite joys of paradise.
+
+'Run, by the true and living God I exhort you, run, and help; before the
+living fountain, whence you were consecrated and born again, shall dry
+up: before the little spark remaining of that brilliant flame, from which
+you knew the light, be extinguished; before your spiritual mother, the
+holy Church of God, in which you hope to receive eternal life, shall be
+humiliated, invaded, violated, and defiled by the impious.
+
+'But if not, may your provinces in return, and your possessions, be
+invaded by people whom you know not.  Separate not yourselves from my
+Roman people; so you will not be aliens, and separate from the kingdom of
+God, and eternal life.  For whatever you shall ask of me, I will surely
+give you, and be your patron.  Assist my Roman people, your brothers; and
+strive more perfectly; for it is written, No man receiveth the crown,
+unless he strive lawfully.
+
+'I conjure you, most beloved, by the living God, leave not this my city
+of Rome to be any longer torn by the Lombards, lest your bodies and souls
+be torn and tormented for ever, in inextinguishable and Tartarian fire
+with the devil and his pestiferous angels; and let not the sheep of the
+Lord's flock, which are the Roman people, be dispersed any more, lest the
+Lord disperse you, and cast you forth as the people of Israel was
+dispersed.'
+
+You will conclude, doubtless, that this curious document can be nothing
+but a papal allocution.  Its peculiar scriptural style (wrongly supposed
+to have been invented by the Puritans, who merely learnt it from the old
+Roman clergy), as well as the self-conceit, which fancies the fate of the
+whole world to depend on the prosperity of a small half-ruined city in
+Italy, will be to you sufficient marks of the Roman hand.  But you will
+be somewhat mistaken.  It is hardly an epistle from the successor of St.
+Peter.  It professes to be an epistle from St. Peter himself, and sent by
+him through the hands of Pope Stephen III. to Pepin the king of the
+Franks, in the year 755.  You will have concluded also from it, that
+Catholic Christianity is in its extreme agony; that the worship and name
+of our Lord, and the fountains of sacramental grace are about to be
+extinguished for ever, and that nothing but heresy or heathendom can
+follow.  Then you will be quite mistaken.  These Lombards are pious
+Catholics.  Builders of churches and monasteries, they are taking up the
+relics of the Roman martyrs, to transfer them to the churches of Milan
+and Pavia.  They have just given Pope Stephen the most striking proof of
+their awe of his person and office.  But they are quarrelling with him
+about the boundaries of his estates for the patrimony of St. Peter.  They
+consider that he and his predecessors have grossly wronged them at
+different times; and now last of all, by calling in foreign invaders; and
+they are at the gates of Rome laying waste the country, and demanding a
+poll-tax as ransom.  That is all.
+
+The causes which led to this quarrel must be sought far back in history.
+The original documents in which you will find the facts will be Paulus
+Diaconus, as far as King Luitprand's death; then the Life and Writings of
+Gregory the Great; and then Baronius' Annals, especially his quotations
+from Anastasius' Life of Stephen III., bearing in mind that, as with the
+Ostrogoths, we have only the Roman Papal story; that the Lombards have
+never stated their case, not even through Paulus Diaconus, who, being a
+clergyman, prudently holds his tongue about the whole matter.  But by far
+the best account is to be found in Dean Milman's 'Latin Christianity,'
+Vols.  I. and II.  Rome, you must understand, has become gradually the
+patrimony of St. Peter; the Popes are the practical kings of Rome,
+possessing, in the name of the Church, much land round Rome, and many
+estates scattered throughout Italy, and even in Sicily, Gaul, Africa, and
+the East--estates probably bequeathed by pious people.  They have
+succeeded to this jurisdiction simply by default.  They rule Rome,
+because there is no one else to rule it.  We find St. Gregory the Great
+feeding the pauper-masses of Rome, on the first day of every month, from
+the fruitful corn-bearing estates in Sicily; keeping up the 'Panem;' but
+substituting, thank Heaven, for the 'Circenses' at least the services of
+the Church.  Of course, the man who could keep the Roman people alive
+must needs become, ipso facto, their monarch.
+
+The Pope acknowledges, of course, a certain allegiance to the Emperor at
+Constantinople, and therefore to his representative, the Exarch of
+Ravenna: that is to say, he meets them with flattery when they are
+working on his side; with wrath when they oppose him.  He intrigues with
+them, too, whenever he can safely do so, against the Lombards.
+
+Thus the Pope has become, during the four centuries which followed the
+destruction of the Western Empire, the sole surviving representative of
+that Empire.  He is the head of the 'gens togata;' of the 'Senatus
+Populusque Romanus.'  In him Rome has risen again out of her grave, to
+awe the peoples once more by the Romani nominis umbra; and to found a new
+Empire; not as before, on physical force, and the awe of visible power;
+but on the deeper and more enduring ground of spiritual force, and the
+awe of the invisible world.
+
+An Empire, I say.  The Popes were becoming, from the 5th to the 8th
+centuries, not merely the lords of Rome, but the lords of the Western
+Church.  Their spiritual Empire, to do them justice, was not so much
+deliberately sought by them, as thrust upon them.  As the clergy were,
+all over the Empire, the representatives of the down-trodden Romans, so
+they naturally gravitated toward the Eternal City, their ancient
+mistress.  Like all disciplined and organized bodies they felt the need
+of unity, of monarchy.  Where could they find it, save at Rome?  Rome was
+still, practically and in fact, the fountain of their doctrine, of their
+superior civilization; and to submit themselves to the Pope of Rome was
+their only means of keeping up one faith, one practice, and the strength
+which comes from union.
+
+To seat the Pope upon the throne of the Caesars; to attribute to him
+powers weightier than all which the Caesars had possest . . . It was a
+magnificent idea.  A politic idea, too; for it would cover the priesthood
+with all the prestige of ancient Rome, and enable them to face the
+barbarian in the name of that great people whose very memory still awed
+him; whose baths, aqueducts, palaces, he looked on as the work of demons;
+whose sages and poets were to him enchanters; whose very gems, dug out of
+the ruins by night, in fear and trembling, possest magic influence for
+healing, for preservation, for good fortune in peace or war.
+
+Politic; and in their eyes, true.  Easy enough to be believed honestly,
+by men who already believed honestly in their own divine mission.  They
+were the representatives of Christ on earth.  Of that fact there could be
+then, or can be now, no doubt whatsoever.  Whatsoever truth, light,
+righteousness, there was in the West, came to it through them.  And
+Christ was the King of kings.  But He delayed his coming: at moments, He
+seemed to have deserted the earth, and left mankind to tear itself in
+pieces, with wild war and misrule.  But it could not be so.  If Christ
+were absent, He must at least have left an authority behind Him to occupy
+till He came; a head and ruler for his opprest and distracted Church.  And
+who could that be, if not the Pope of Rome?
+
+It ought to be so.--It must be so--thought they.  And to men in that
+mood, proofs that it was so soon came to hand, and accumulated from
+generation to generation; till the Pope at last found himself
+proclaiming, and what was more, believing, that God had given the whole
+world to St. Peter, and through St. Peter to him; and that he was the
+only source of power, law, kingship, who could set up and pull down whom
+he would, as the vicegerent of God on earth.
+
+Such pretensions, of course, grew but slowly.  It was not, I believe,
+till the year 875, 180 years after the time of which I am speaking, that
+Pope John VIII. distinctly asserted his right, as representative of the
+ancient Roman Empire, to create the Caesar; and informed the Synod of
+Pavia that he had 'elected and approved Charles the Bald, with the
+consent of his brothers the bishops, of the other ministers of the Holy
+Roman Church, and' (significant, though empty words) 'of the Roman senate
+and people.'
+
+At the time of which I speak, the power was still in embryo, growing,
+through many struggles: but growing surely and strongly, and destined
+speedily to avenge the fall of Rome on the simple barbarians who were
+tearing each other to pieces over her spoils.
+
+It is not easy to explain the lasting and hereditary hatred of the Popes
+to the Lombards.  Its origin is simple enough: but not so its
+continuance.  Why they should be nefandissimi in the eyes of Pope Gregory
+the Great one sees: but why 100 years afterwards, they should be still
+nefandissimi, and 'non dicenda gens Langobardorum,' not to be called a
+nation, is puzzling.
+
+At first, of course, the Pope could only look on them as a fresh horde of
+barbarous conquerors; half heathen, half Arian.  Their virtuous and loyal
+life within the boundaries of Alboin's conquests--of which Paulus
+Diaconus says, that violence and treachery were unknown--that no one
+oppressed, no one plundered--that the traveller went where he would in
+perfect safety--all this would be hid from the Pope by the plain fact,
+that they were continually enlarging their frontier toward Rome; that
+they had founded two half-independent Dukedoms of Beneventum and Spoleto,
+that Autharis had swept over South Italy, and ridden his horse into the
+sea at Reggio, to strike with his lance a column in the waves, and cry,
+'Here ends the Lombard kingdom.'
+
+The Pope (Gregory the Great I am speaking of) could only recollect,
+again, that during the lawless interregnum before Autharis' coronation,
+the independent Lombard dukes had plundered churches and monasteries,
+slain the clergy, and destroyed the people, who had 'grown up again like
+corn.'
+
+But as years rolled on, these Arian Lombards had become good Catholics;
+and that in the lifetime of Gregory the Great.
+
+Theodelinda, the Bavarian princess, she to whom Autharis had gone in
+disguise to her father's court, and only confessed himself at his
+departure, by rising in his stirrups, and burying his battle-axe in a
+tree stem with the cry, 'Thus smites Autharis the Lombard,'--this
+Theodelinda, I say, had married after his death Agilwulf his cousin, and
+made him king of the Lombards.
+
+She was a Catholic; and through her Gregory the Great converted Autharis,
+and the Lombard nation.  To her he addressed those famous dialogues of
+his, full alike of true piety and earnestness, and of childish
+superstition.  But in judging them and him we must bear in mind, that
+these Lombards became at least by his means Catholics, and that Arians
+would have believed in the superstitions just as much as Catholics.  And
+it is surely better to believe a great truth, plus certain mistakes which
+do not affect it in the least, than a great lie, plus the very same
+mistakes likewise.  Which is best, to believe that the road to London
+lies through Bishopstortford, and that there are dog-headed men on the
+road: or that it lies through Edinburgh, but that there are dog-headed
+men on that road too?
+
+Theodelinda had built at Modicaea, twelve miles above Milan, a fair
+basilica to John the Baptist, enriched by her and the Lombard kings and
+dukes, 'crowns, crosses, golden tables adorned with emeralds, hyacinths,
+amber, carbuncles and pearls, gold and silver altar-cloths, and that
+admirable cup of sapphire,' all which remained till the eighteenth
+century.  There, too, was the famous iron crown of Lombardy, which
+Austria still claims as her own; so called from a thin ring of iron
+inserted in it, made from a nail of the true cross which Gregory had sent
+Agilwulf; just as he sent Childebert, the Frankish king, some filings of
+St. Peter's chains; which however, he says, did not always allow their
+sacred selves to be filed.
+
+In return, Agilwulf had restored the church-property which he had
+plundered, had reinstated the bishops; and why did not all go well?  Why
+are these Lombards still the most wicked of men?
+
+Again, in the beginning of the eighth century came the days of the good
+Luitprand, 'wise and pious, a lover of peace, and mighty in war; merciful
+to offenders, chaste and modest, instant in prayer, bountiful in alms,
+equal to the philosophers, though he knew no letters, a nourisher of his
+people, an augmenter of the laws.'  He it was, who, when he had
+quarrelled with Pope Gregory II., and marched on Rome, was stopped at the
+Gates of the Vatican by the Pontiff's prayers and threats.  And a sacred
+awe fell on him; and humbly entering St. Peter's, he worshipped there,
+and laid on the Apostle's tomb his royal arms, his silver cross and crown
+of gold, and withdrawing his army, went home again in peace.  But why
+were this great king's good deeds towards the Pope and the Catholic faith
+rewarded, by what we can only call detestable intrigue and treachery?
+
+Again; Leo the Iconoclast Emperor destroyed the holy images in the East,
+and sent commands to the Exarch of Ravenna to destroy them in western
+Italy.  Pope Gregory II. replied by renouncing allegiance to the Emperor
+of Constantinople; and by two famous letters which are still preserved;
+in which he tells the Iconoclast Emperor, that, 'if he went round the
+grammar-schools at Rome, the children would throw their horn-books at his
+head . . . that he implored Christ to send the Emperor a devil, for the
+destruction of his body and the salvation of his soul . . . that if he
+attempted to destroy the images in Rome, the pontiff would take refuge
+with the Lombards, and then he might as well chase the wind that the
+Popes were the mediators of peace between East and West, and that the
+eyes of the nations were fixed on the Pope's humility, and adored as a
+God on earth the apostle St. Peter.  And that the pious Barbarians,
+kindled into rage, thirsted to avenge the persecution of the East.'  Then
+Luitprand took up the cause of the Pope and his images, and of the mob,
+who were furious at the loss of their idols; and marched on Ravenna,
+which opened her gates to him, so that he became master of the whole
+Pentapolis; and image-worship, to which some plainspoken people give a
+harsher name, was saved for ever and a day in Italy.  Why did Gregory II.
+in return, call in Orso, the first Venetian Doge, to expel from Ravenna
+the very Luitprand who had fought his battles for him, and to restore
+that Exarchate of Ravenna, of which it was confessed, that its civil
+quarrels, misrule, and extortions, made it the most miserable government
+in Italy?  And why did he enter into secret negotiations with the Franks
+to come and invade Italy?
+
+Again, when Luitprand wanted to reduce the duchies of Beneventum and
+Spoleto, which he considered as rebels against him, their feudal
+suzerain; why did the next Pope, Gregory III., again send over the Alps
+to Charles Martel to come and invade Italy, and deliver the Church and
+Christ's people from ruin?
+
+And who were these Franks, the ancestors of that magnificent, but
+profligate aristocracy whose destruction our grandfathers beheld in 1793?
+I have purposely abstained from describing them, till they appear upon
+the stage of Italy, and take part in her fortunes--which were then the
+fortunes of the world.
+
+They appear first on the Roman frontier in A.D. 241, and from that time
+are never at rest till they have conquered the north of Gaul.  They are
+supposed (with reason) not to have been a race or tribe at all; but a
+confederation of warriors, who were simply 'Franken,' 'free;' 'free
+companions,' or 'free lances,' as they would have been called a few
+centuries later; who recruited themselves from any and every tribe who
+would join them in war and plunder.  If this was the case; if they had
+thrown away, as adventurers, much of the old Teutonic respect for law,
+for the royal races, for family life, for the sacred bonds of kindred,
+many of their peculiarities are explained.  Falsehood, brutality,
+lawlessness, ignorance, and cruelty to the conquered Romans, were their
+special sins; while their special, and indeed only virtue, was that
+indomitable daring which they transmitted to their descendants for so
+many hundred years.  The buccaneers of the young world, they were
+insensible to all influences save that of superstition.  They had become,
+under Clovis, orthodox Christians: but their conversion, to judge from
+the notorious facts of history, worked little improvement on their
+morals.  The pages of Gregory of Tours are comparable, for dreary
+monotony of horrors, only to those of Johnson's History of the Pyrates.
+
+But, as M. Sismondi well remarks, their very ignorance and brutality made
+them the more easily the tools of the Roman clergy: 'Cette haute
+veneration pour l'Eglise, et leur severe orthodoxie, d'autant plus facile
+a conserver que, ne faisant aucune etude, et ne disputant jamais sur la
+foi, ils ne connaissaient pas meme les questions controversees, leur
+donnerent dans le clerge de puissants auxiliaires.  Les Francs se
+montrerent disposes a hair les Ariens, a les combattres, et les
+depouiller sans les entendre; les eveques, en retour, ne se montrerent
+pas scrupuleux sur le reste des enseignements moraux de la religion: ils
+fermerent les yeux sur les violences, le meurtre, le dereglement des
+moeurs; ils autoriserent en quelque sorte publiquement la poligamie, et
+ils precherent le droit divin des rois et le devoir le l'obeissance pour
+les peuples {279}.'
+
+A painful picture of the alliance: but, I fear, too true.
+
+The history of these Franks you must read for yourselves.  You will find
+it well told in the pages of Sismondi, and in Mr. Perry's excellent book,
+'The Franks.'  It suffices now to say, that in the days of Luitprand
+these Franks, after centuries of confusion and bloodshed, have been
+united into one great nation, stretching from the Rhine to the Loire and
+the sea, and encroaching continually to the southward and eastward.  The
+government has long passed out of the hands of their faineant Meerwing
+kings into that of the semi-hereditary Majores Domus, or Mayors of the
+Palace; and Charles Martel, perhaps the greatest of that race of great
+men, has just made himself mayor of Austrasia (the real Teutonic centre
+of Frank life and power), Neustria and Burgundy.  He has crushed Eudo,
+the duke of Romanized Aquitaine, and has finally delivered France and
+Christendom from the invading Saracens.  On his Franks, and on the
+Lombards of Italy, rest, for the moment, the destinies of Europe.
+
+For meanwhile another portent has appeared, this time out of the far
+East.  Another swarm of destroyers has swept over the earth.  The wild
+Arabs of the desert, awakening into sudden life and civilization under
+the influence of a new creed, have overwhelmed the whole East, the whole
+north of Africa, destroying the last relics of Roman and Greek
+civilization, and with them the effete and semi-idolatrous Christianity
+of the Empire.  All the work of Narses and Belisarius is undone.  Arab
+Emirs rule in the old kingdom of the Vandals.  The new human deluge has
+crossed the Straits into Europe.  The Visigoths, enervated by the
+luxurious climate of Spain, have recoiled before the Mussulman invaders.
+Roderick, the last king of the Goths, is wandering as an unknown penitent
+in expiation of his sin against the fair Cava, which brought down (so
+legends and ballads tell) the scourge of God upon the hapless land; and
+the remnants of the old Visigoths and Sueves are crushed together into
+the mountain fastnesses of Asturias and Gallicia, thence to reissue,
+after long centuries, as the noble Spanish nation, wrought in the forges
+of adversity into the likeness of tempered steel; and destined to
+reconquer, foot by foot, their native land from the Moslem invader.
+
+But at present the Crescent was master of the Cross; and beyond the
+Pyrenees all was slavery and 'miscreance.'  The Arabs, invading France in
+732, in countless thousands, had been driven back at the great fight of
+Tours, with a slaughter so great, that the excited imagination of Paulus
+Diaconus sees 375,000 miscreants dead upon the field, while only 1500
+Franks had perished.  But home troubles had prevented 'the Hammer of the
+Moors' from following up his victory.  The Saracens had returned in force
+in 737, and again in 739.  They still held Narbonne.  The danger was
+imminent.  There was no reason why they should not attempt a third
+invasion.  Why should they not spread along the shores of the
+Mediterranean, establishing themselves there, as they were already doing
+in Sicily, and menacing Rome from north as well as south?  To unite,
+therefore, the two great Catholic Teutonic powers, the Frank and the
+Lombard, for the defence of Christendom, should have been the policy of
+him who called himself the Chief Pontiff in Christendom.  Yet the Pope
+preferred, in the face of that great danger, to set the Teutonic nations
+on destroying each other, rather than to unite them against the Moslem.
+
+The bribe offered to the Frank was significant--the title of Roman
+Consul; beside which he was to have filings of St. Peter's chains, and
+the key of his tomb, to preserve him body and soul from all evil.
+
+Charles would not come.  Frank though he was, he was too honourable to
+march at a priest's bidding against Luitprand, his old brother in arms,
+to whom he had sent the boy Pepin, his son, that Luitprand might take him
+on his knee, and cut his long royal hair, and become his father-in-arms,
+after the good old Teuton fashion; Luitprand, who with his Lombards had
+helped him to save Christendom a second time from the Mussulman in 737.
+The Pope, one would think, should have remembered that good deed of the
+good Lombard's whereof his epitaph sings,
+
+         'Deinceps tremuere feroces
+   Usque Saraceni, quos dispulit impiger, ipsos
+   Cum premerent Gallos, Karolo poscente juvari.'
+
+So Charles Martel took the title of Patrician from the Pope, but sent him
+no armies; and the quarrel went on; while Charles filled up the measure
+of his iniquity by meddling with that church-property in Gaul which his
+sword had saved from the hordes of the Saracens; and is now, as St.
+Eucherius (or Bishop Hincmar) saw in a vision, writhing therefore in the
+lowest abyss of hell.
+
+So one generation more passes by; and then Pepin le Bref, grown to
+manhood, is less scrupulous than his father.  He is bound to the Pope by
+gratitude.  The Pope has confirmed him as king, allowing him to depose
+the royal house of the Merovingians, and so assumed the right of making
+kings.--A right which future popes will not forget.
+
+Meanwhile the Pope has persuaded the Lombard king Rachis to go into a
+monastery.  Astulf seizes the crown, and attacks Ravenna.  The Pope
+succeeding, Stephen III., opposes him; and he marches on Rome,
+threatening to assault it, unless the citizens redeem their lives by a
+poll-tax.
+
+Stephen determines to go himself to Pepin to ask for help: and so awful
+has the name and person of a Pope become, that he is allowed to do it;
+allowed to pass safely and unarmed through the very land upon which he is
+going to let loose all the horrors of invading warfare.
+
+It is a strange, and instructive figure, that.  The dread of the unseen,
+the fear of spiritual power, has fallen on the wild Teutons; on Frank and
+on Lombard alike.  The Pope and his clergy are to them magicians, against
+whom neither sword nor lance avails; who can heal the sick and blast the
+sound; who can call to their aid out of the clouds that pantheon of demi-
+gods, with which, under the name of saints, they have peopled heaven; who
+can let loose on them the legions of fiends who dwell in every cave,
+every forest, every ruin, every cloud; who can, by the sentence of
+excommunication, destroy both body and soul in hell.  They were very loth
+to fear God, these wild Teutons; therefore they had instead, as all men
+have who will not fear God, to fear the devil.
+
+So Pope Stephen goes to Pepin, the eldest son of the Church.  He promises
+to come with all his Franks.  Stephen's conscience seems to have been
+touched: he tries to have no fighting, only negotiation: but it is too
+late now.  Astolf will hear of no terms; Pepin sweeps over the Alps, and
+at the gates of Pavia dictates his own terms to the Lombards.  The old
+Lombard spirit seems to have past away.
+
+Pepin goes back again, and Astolf refuses to fulfil his promises.  The
+Pope sends Pepin that letter from St. Peter himself with which this
+lecture commenced.
+
+Astolf has marched down, as we heard, to the walls of Rome, laying the
+land waste; cutting down the vines, carrying off consecrated vessels,
+insulting the sacrament of the altar.  The Lombards have violated nuns;
+and tried to kill them, the Pope says; though, if they had really tried,
+one cannot see why they should not have succeeded.  In fact, Pope
+Stephen's hysterical orations to Pepin must be received with extreme
+caution.  No Catholic historian of that age cares to examine the truth of
+a fact which makes for him; nothing is too bad to say of an enemy: and
+really the man who would forge a letter from St. Peter might dare to tell
+a few lesser falsehoods into the bargain.  Pepin cannot but obey so
+august a summons; and again he is in Italy, and the Lombards dare not
+resist him.  He seizes not only all that Astolf had taken from the Pope,
+but the Pentapolis and Exarchate, the property, if of any one, of the
+Greek Emperors, and bestows them on Stephen, the Pope, and 'the holy
+Roman Republic.'
+
+The pope's commissioners received the keys of the towns, which were
+placed upon the altar of St. Peter; and this, the Dotation of Pepin, the
+Dotation of the Exarchate, was the first legal temporal sovereignty of
+the Popes:--born in sin, and conceived in iniquity, as you may see.
+
+The Lombard rule now broke up rapidly.  The Lombards of Spoleto yielded
+to the double pressure of Franks and Romans, asked to be 'taken into the
+service of St. Peter,' and clipt their long German locks after the Roman
+fashion.
+
+Charlemagne, in his final invasion, had little left to do.  He confirmed
+Pepin's gift, and even, though he hardly kept his promise, enlarged it to
+include the whole of Italy, from Lombardy to the frontier of Naples,
+while he himself became king of Lombardy, and won the iron crown.
+
+And so by French armies--not for the last time--was the Pope propt up on
+his ill-gotten throne.
+
+But the mere support of French armies was not enough to seat the Pope
+securely upon the throne of the western Caesars.  Documentary evidence
+was required to prove that they possessed Rome, not as the vassals of the
+Frankish Kaisers, or of any barbarian Teutons whatsoever; but in their
+own right, as hereditary sovereigns of Rome.  And the documents, when
+needed, were forthcoming.  Under the name of St. Isidore, some ready
+scribe produced the too-famous 'Decretals,' and the 'Donation of
+Constantine,' and Pope Adrian I. saw no reason against publishing them to
+Charlemagne and to the world.
+
+It was discovered suddenly, by means of these remarkable documents, that
+Constantine the Great had been healed of leprosy, and afterwards
+baptized, by Pope Sylvester; that he had, in gratitude for his cure,
+resigned to the Popes his western throne, and the patrimony of St. Peter,
+and the sovereignty of Italy and the West; and that this was the true
+reason of his having founded Constantinople, as a new seat of government
+for the remnant of his empire.
+
+This astounding falsehood was, of course, accepted humbly by the
+unlettered Teutons; and did its work well, for centuries to come.  It is
+said--I trust not truly--to be still enrolled among the decrees of the
+Canon law, though reprobated by all enlightened Roman Catholics.  Be that
+as it may, on the strength of this document the Popes began to assume an
+all but despotic sovereignty over the western world, and--the Teutonic
+peoples, and Rome's conquest of her conquerors was at last complete.
+
+What then were the causes of the Papal hatred of a race who were good and
+devout Catholics for the last 200 years of their rule?
+
+There were deep political reasons (in the strictest, and I am afraid
+lowest sense of the word); but over and above them there were evidently
+moral reasons, which lay even deeper still.
+
+A free, plain-spoken, practical race like these Lombards; living by their
+own laws; disbelieving in witchcraft; and seemingly doing little for
+monasticism, were not likely to find favour in the eyes of popes.  They
+were not the material which the Papacy could mould into the Neapolitan
+ideal of 'Little saints,--and little asses.'  These Lombards were not a
+superstitious race; they did not, like the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, crowd
+into monasteries.  I can only find four instances of Lombard sovereigns
+founding monasteries in all Paulus' history.  One of them, strangely
+enough, is that of the very Astulf against whom the Pope fulminated so
+loudly the letter from St. Peter which I read you.
+
+Moreover, it must be said in all fairness--the Lombards despised the
+Romans exceedingly.  So did all the Teutons.  'We Lombards,' says Bishop
+Luitprand, 'Saxons, Franks, Lorrainers, Bavarians, Sueves, Burgunds,
+consider it a sufficient insult to call our enemy a Roman; comprehending
+in that one name of Roman, whatever is ignoble, cowardly, avaricious,
+luxurious, false, in a word, every vice.'  If this was--as it very
+probably was--the feeling of the whole Teutonic race; and if it was
+repaid--as it certainly was--on the part of the Roman, by contempt for
+the 'barbarism' and 'ignorance' of the Teuton; what must have been the
+feeling between Roman and Lombard?  Contact must have embittered mutual
+contempt into an utter and internecine hatred, in which the Pope, as
+representative of the Roman people, could not but share.
+
+As for the political reasons, they are clear enough.  It is absurd to say
+that they wished to free Italy from Lombard tyrants.  What did they do
+but hand her over to Frankish tyrants instead?  No.  The true reason was
+this.  Gradually there had arisen in the mind of all Popes, from Gregory
+the Great onward, the idea of a spiritual supremacy, independent of all
+kings of the earth.  It was a great idea, as the event proved: it was a
+beneficent one for Europe; but a ruinous one for Italy.  For the Popes
+were not content with spiritual power.  They could not conceive of it as
+separated from temporal power, and temporal power meant land.  How early
+they set their hearts on the Exarchate of Ravenna, we shall never know:
+the fact is patent, that it was a Naboth's vineyard to them; and that to
+obtain it they called in the Franks.
+
+Their dread was, evidently, lest the Lombards should become masters of
+the whole of Italy.  A united Italy suited their views then, no more than
+it does now.  Not only did they conceive of Rome as still the centre of
+the western world, but more, their stock in trade was at Rome.  The
+chains of St. Peter, the sepulchres of St. Peter and St. Paul, the
+catacombs filled with the bones of innumerable martyrs;--these were their
+stock in trade.  By giving these, selling these, working miracles with
+these, calling pilgrims from all parts of Christendom to visit these in
+situ, they kept up their power and their wealth.  I do not accuse them of
+misusing that power and that wealth in those days.  They used them, on
+the contrary, better than power and wealth had been ever used in the
+world before.  But they were dependent on the sanctity attached to a
+particular spot; and any power, which, like the Lombard, tended to give
+Italy another centre than Rome, they dreaded and disliked.  That Lombard
+basilica, near Milan, with all its treasures, must have been in their
+eyes, a formidable rival.  Still more frightful must it have been to them
+to see Astulf, when he encamped before the walls of Rome, searching for
+martyrs' relics, and carrying them off to Milan.  That, as a fact, seems
+to have been the exciting cause of Stephen's journey to Pepin.  This
+Astulf was a good Catholic.  He founded a nunnery, and put his own
+daughters in it.  What could a man do more meritorious in the eyes of the
+Pope?  But he took away the lands of the Church, and worse, the relics,
+the reserved capital by which the Church purchased lands.  This was
+indeed a crime only to be expiated by the horrors of a Frank invasion.
+
+On the same principle the Popes supported the Exarchs of Ravenna, and the
+independent duchies of Spoleto and Beneventum.  Well or ill ruled,
+Iconoclast or not, they were necessary to keep Italy divided and weak.
+And having obtained what they wanted from Pepin and Charlemagne, it was
+still their interest to pursue the same policy; to compound for their own
+independence, as they did with Charlemagne and his successors, by
+defending the pretences of foreign kings to the sovereignty of the rest
+of Italy.  This has been their policy for centuries.  It is their policy
+still; and that policy has been the curse of Italy.  This fatal gift of
+the patrimony of St. Peter--as Dante saw--as Machiavelli saw,--as all
+clear-sighted Italians have seen,--as we are seeing it now in these very
+days--has kept her divided, torn by civil wars, conquered and reconquered
+by foreign invaders.  Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his
+dominions into a strong hereditary kingdom; unable, as the hierophant of
+a priestly caste, to unite his people in the bonds of national life;
+unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer the rest of Italy for himself;
+and form it into a kingdom large enough to have weight in the balance of
+power; the Pope has been forced, again and again, to keep himself on his
+throne by intriguing with foreign princes, and calling in foreign arms;
+and the bane of Italy, from the time of Stephen III. to that of Pius IX.,
+has been the temporal power of the Pope.
+
+But on the popes, also, the Nemesis came.  In building their power on the
+Roman relics, on the fable that Rome was the patrimony of Peter, they had
+built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself.
+
+Had they been independent of the locality of Rome; had they been really
+spiritual emperors, by becoming cosmopolitan, journeying, it may be, from
+nation to nation in regular progresses, then their power might have been
+as boundless as they ever desired it should be.  Having committed
+themselves to the false position of being petty kings of a petty kingdom,
+they had to endure continual treachery and tyranny from their foreign
+allies; to see not merely Italy, but Rome itself insulted, and even
+sacked, by faithful Catholics; and to become more and more, as the
+centuries rolled on, the tools of those very kings whom they had wished
+to make their tools.
+
+True, they defended themselves long, and with astonishing skill and
+courage.  Their sources of power were two, the moral, and the
+thaumaturgic; and they used them both: but when the former failed, the
+latter became useless.  As long as their moral power was real; as long as
+they and their clergy were on the whole, in spite of enormous faults, the
+best men in Europe; so long the people believed in them, and in their
+thaumaturgic relics likewise.  But they became by no means the best men
+in Europe.  Then they began to think that after all it was more easy to
+work the material than the moral power--easier to work the bones than to
+work righteousness.  They were deceived.  Behold! when the righteousness
+was gone, the bones refused to work.  People began to question the
+virtues of the bones, and to ask, We can believe that the bones may have
+worked miracles for good men, but for bad men?  We will examine whether
+they work any miracles at all.  And then, behold, it came out that the
+bones did not work miracles, and that possibly they were not saints'
+bones at all; and then the storm came: and the lie, as all lies do,
+punished itself.  The salt had lost its savour.  The Teutonic intellect
+appealed from its old masters to God, and to God's universe of facts, and
+emancipated itself once and for all.  They who had been the light of
+Europe, became its darkness; they who had been first, became last; a
+warning to mankind until the end of time, that on Truth and Virtue
+depends the only abiding strength.
+
+
+
+
+LECTURE XII--THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE
+
+
+I no not know whether any of you know much of the theory of war.  I know
+very little myself.  But something of it one is bound to know, as
+Professor of History.  For, unfortunately, a large portion of the history
+of mankind is the history of war; and the historian, as a man who wants
+to know how things were done--as distinct from the philosopher, the man
+who wants to know how things ought to have been done--ought to know a
+little of the first of human arts--the art of killing.  What little I
+know thereof I shall employ to-day, in explaining to you the invasion of
+the Teutons, from a so-called mechanical point of view.  I wish to shew
+you how it was possible for so small and uncivilized a people to conquer
+one so vast and so civilized; and what circumstances (which you may
+attribute to what cause you will: but I to God) enabled our race to
+conquer in the most vast and important campaign the world has ever seen.
+
+I call it a campaign rather than a war.  Though it lasted 200 years and
+more, it seems to me (it will, I think, seem to you) if you look at the
+maps, as but one campaign: I had almost said, one battle.  There is but
+one problem to be solved; and therefore the operations of our race take a
+sort of unity.  The question is, how to take Rome, and keep it, by
+destroying the Roman Empire.
+
+Let us consider the two combatants--their numbers, and their position.
+
+One glance at the map will shew you which are the most numerous.  When
+you cast your eye over the vastness of the Roman Empire from east to
+west--Italy, Switzerland, half Austria, Turkey and Greece, Asia Minor,
+Syria, Egypt, North Africa, Spain, France, Britain--and then compare it
+with the narrow German strip which reaches from the mouth of the Danube
+to the mouth of the Rhine, the disparity of area is enormous; ten times
+as great at least; perhaps more, if you accept, as I am inclined to do,
+the theory of Dr. Latham, that we were always 'Markmen,' men of the
+Marches, occupying a narrow frontier between the Slavs and the Roman
+Empire; and that Tacitus has included among Germans, from hearsay, many
+tribes of the interior of Bohemia, Prussia, and Poland, who were Slavs or
+others; and that the numbers and area of our race has been, on Tacitus'
+authority, greatly overrated.
+
+What then were the causes of the success of the Teutons?  Native courage
+and strength?
+
+They had these: but you must recollect what I have told you, that those
+very qualities were employed against them; that they were hired, in large
+numbers, into the Roman armies, to fight against their own brothers.
+
+Unanimity?  Of that, alas! one can say but little.  The great Teutonic
+army had not only to fight the Romans, but to fight each brigade the
+brigade before it, to make them move on; and the brigade behind it
+likewise, to prevent their marching over them; while too often two
+brigades quarrelled like children, and destroyed each other on the spot.
+
+What, then, was the cause of their success?  I think a great deal of it
+must be attributed to their admirable military position.
+
+Look at a map of Europe; putting yourself first at the point to be
+attacked--at Rome, and looking north, follow the German frontier from the
+Euxine up the Danube and down the Rhine.  It is a convex arc: but not
+nearly as long as the concave arc of the Roman frontier opposed to it.
+The Roman frontier overlaps it to the north-west by all Britain, to the
+south-west by part of Turkey and the whole of Asia Minor.
+
+That would seem to make it weak, and liable to be outflanked on either
+wing.  In reality it made it strong.
+
+Both the German wings rested on the sea; one on the Euxine, one on the
+North Sea.  That in itself would not have given strength; for the Roman
+fleets were masters of the seas.  But the lands in the rear, on either
+flank, were deserts, incapable of supporting an army.  What would have
+been the fate of a force landed at the mouth of the Weser on the north,
+or at the mouth of the Dnieper at the west?  Starvation among wild moors,
+and bogs, and steppes, if they attempted to leave their base of
+operations on the coast.  The Romans saw this, and never tried the plan.
+To defend the centre of their position was the safest and easiest plan.
+
+Look at this centre.  It is complicated.  The Roman position is guarded
+by the walls of Italy, the gigantic earthwork of the Alps.  To storm
+them, is impossible.  But right and left of them, the German position has
+two remarkable points--strategic points, which decided the fate of the
+world.
+
+They are two salient angles, promontories of the German frontier.  The
+one is north-east of Switzerland; the Allman country, between the head-
+waters of the Danube and the Upper Rhine, Basle is its apex.  Mentz its
+northern point, Ratisbon its southern.  That triangle encloses the end of
+the Schwartzwald; the Black Forest of primaeval oak.  Those oaks have
+saved Europe.
+
+The advantages of a salient angle of that kind, in invading an enemy's
+country, are manifest.  You can break out on either side, and return at
+once into your own country on 'lines of interior operation;' while the
+enemy has to march round the angle, three feet for your one, on 'lines of
+exterior operation.'  The early German invaders saw that, and burst again
+and again into Gaul from that angle.  The Romans saw it also (admirable
+strategists as they were) and built Hadrian's wall right across it, from
+the Maine to the Danube, to keep them back.  And why did not Hadrian's
+wall keep them back?  On account of the Black Forest.  The Roman never
+dared to face it; to attempt to break our centre, and to save Italy by
+carrying the war into the heart of Germany.  They knew (what the invaders
+of England will discover to their cost) that a close woodland is a more
+formidable barrier than the Alps themselves.  The Black Forest, I say,
+was the key of our position, and saved our race.
+
+From this salient angle, and along the whole Rhine above it, the Western
+Teutons could throw their masses into Gaul; Franks, Vandals, Alans,
+Suevi, following each other in echellon.  You know what an echellon
+means?  When bodies of troops move in lines parallel to each other, but
+each somewhat in the rear of the other, so that their whole position
+resembles an echelle--a flight of steps.  This mode of attack has two
+great advantages.  It cannot be outflanked by the enemy; and he dare not
+concentrate his forces on the foremost division, and beat the divisions
+in detail.  If he tries to do so, he is out-flanked himself; and he is
+liable to be beaten in detail by continually fresh bodies of troops.  Thus
+only a part of his line is engaged at a time.  Now it was en echellon,
+from necessity, that the tribes moved down.  They could not follow
+immediately in each other's track, because two armies following each
+other would not have found subsistence in the same country.  They had to
+march in parallel lines; those nearest to Italy moving first; and thus
+forming a vast echellon, whose advanced left rested on, and was protected
+by, the Alps.
+
+But you must remember (and this is important) that all these western
+attacks along the Rhine and Rhone were mistakes, in as far as they were
+aimed at Rome.  The Teutons were not aware, I suppose, that the Alps
+turned to the South between Gaul and Italy, and ran right down to the
+Mediterranean.  There they found themselves still cut off from Rome by
+them.  Hannibal's pass over the Mont Cenis they seem not to have known.
+They had to range down to the Mediterranean; turn eastward along the
+Genoese coast at Nice; and then, far away from their base of operations,
+were cut off again and again, just as the Cimbri and Teutons were cut off
+by Marius.  All attempts to take Rome from the Piedmontese entrance into
+Italy failed.  But these western attacks had immense effects.  They cut
+the Roman position in two.
+
+And then came out the real weakness of that great ill-gotten Empire,
+conquered for conquering's sake.  To the north-west, the Romans had
+extended their line far beyond what they could defend.  The whole of
+North Gaul was taken by the Franks.  Britain was then isolated, and had
+to be given up to its fate.  South Gaul, being nearer to Italy their
+base, they could defend, and did, like splendid soldiers as they were;
+but that defence only injured them.  It thrust the foremost columns of
+the enemy on into Spain.  Spain was too far from their base of operation
+to be defended, and was lost likewise, and seized by Vandals and Suevi.
+The true point of attack was at the other salient angle of our position,
+on the Roman right centre.
+
+You know that the Danube as you ascend it lies east and west from the
+Black Sea to Belgrade; but above the point where the Save enters it, it
+turns north almost at right angles.  This is the second salient point;
+the real key of the whole Roman Empire.  For from this point the Germans
+could menace--equally, Constantinople and Turkey on the right (I speak
+always as standing at Rome and looking north), and Italy and Rome on the
+left.  The Danube once crossed, between them and Constantinople was
+nothing but the rich rolling land of Turkey; between them and Rome
+nothing but the easy passes of the Carnic Alps, Laybach to Trieste.
+Trieste was the key of the Roman position.  It was, and always will be, a
+most important point.  It might be the centre of a great kingdom.  The
+nation which has it ought to spend its last bullet in defending it.
+
+The Teutons did cross the Danube, as you know, in 376, and had a great
+victory, of which nothing came but moral force.  They waited long in
+Moesia before they found out the important step which they had made.  The
+genius of Alaric first discovered the key of the Roman position, and
+discovered that it was in his own hands.
+
+I do not say that no Germans had crossed the Laybach pass before him.  On
+the contrary, Markmen, Quadi, Vandals, seem to have come over it as early
+as 180, and appeared under the walls of Aquileia.  Of course, some one
+must have gone first, or Alaric would not have known of it.  There were
+no maps then, at least among our race.  Their great generals had to feel
+their way foot by foot, trusting to hearsays of old adventurers,
+deserters, and what not, as to whether a fruitful country or an
+impassable alp, a great city or the world's end, was twenty miles a-head
+of them.  Yes, they had great generals among them, and Alaric, perhaps,
+the greatest.
+
+If you consider Alaric's campaigns, from A.D. 400 to A.D. 415, you will
+see that the eye of a genius planned them.  He wanted Rome, as all
+Teutons did.  He was close to Italy, in the angle of which I just spoke;
+but instead of going hither, he resolved to go south, and destroy Greece,
+and he did it.  Thereby, if you will consider, he cut the Roman Empire in
+two.  He paralysed and destroyed the right wing of its forces, which
+might, if he had marched straight for Italy, have come up from Greece and
+Turkey, to take him in flank and rear.  He prevented their doing that; he
+prevented also their succouring Italy by sea by the same destruction.  And
+then he was free to move on Rome, knowing that he leaves no strong place
+on his left flank, save Constantinople itself; and that the Ostrogoths,
+and other tribes left behind, would mask it for him.  Then he moved into
+Italy over the Carnic Alps, and was repulsed the first time at Pollentia.
+He was not disheartened; he retired upon Hungary, waited five years,
+tried it again, and succeeded, after a campaign of two years.
+
+Yes.  He was a great general.  To be able to move vast masses of men
+safely through a hostile country and in face of an enemy's army (beside
+women and children) requires an amount of talent bestowed on few.  Alaric
+could do it.  Dietrich the Ostrogoth could do it.  Alboin the Lombard
+could do it, though not under such fearful disadvantages.  There were
+generals before Marlborough or Napoleon.
+
+And do not fancy that the work was easy; that the Romans were degenerate
+enough to be an easy prey.  Alaric had been certainly beaten out of
+Italy, even though the victory of Pollentia was exaggerated.  And in 405,
+Radagast with 200,000 men had tried to take Rome by Alaric's route, and
+had simply, from want of generalship, been forced to capitulate under the
+walls of Florence, and the remnant of his army sold for slaves.
+
+Why was Alaric more fortunate?  Because he was a great genius.  And why
+when he died, did the Goths lose all plan, and wander wildly up Italy,
+and out into Spain?  Because the great genius was gone.  Native Teuton
+courage could ensure no permanent success against Roman discipline and
+strategy, unless guided by men like Alaric or Dietrich.
+
+You might fancy the campaign over now: but it was not.  Along the country
+of the Danube, from the Euxine to the Alps, the Teutons had still the
+advantage of interior lines, and vast bodies of men--Herules, Gepids,
+Ostrogoths, Lombards--were coming down in an enormous echellon similar to
+that which forced the Rhine; to force Italy at the same fatal
+point--Venetia.  The party who could command the last reserve would win,
+as is the rule.  And the last reserves were with our race.  They must
+win.  But not yet.  They had, in the mean time, taken up a concave line;
+a great arc running round the whole west of the Mediterranean from Italy,
+France, Spain, Algeria, as far as Carthage.  They could not move forces
+round that length of coast, as fast as the Romans could move them by sea;
+and they had no fleets.  Although they had conquered the Western Empire,
+they were in a very dangerous position, and were about to be very nearly
+ruined.
+
+For you see, the Romans in turn had changed front at more than a right
+angle.  They lay at first north-west and south-east.  They lay in
+Justinian's time, north and south.  Their right was Constantinople; their
+left Pentapolis; between those two points they held Greece, Asia Minor,
+Syria and Egypt; a position of wealth incalculable.  Meanwhile, as we
+must remember always, they were masters of the sea, and therefore of the
+interior lines of operation.  They had been forced into this position;
+but, like Romans, they had accepted it.  With the boundless common sense
+of the race (however fallen, debauched, pedantic), they worked it out,
+and with terrible effect.
+
+Their right in Constantinople was so strong that they cared nothing for
+it, though it was the only exposed point.  They would defend it by hiring
+the Barbarians, and when they could not pay them, setting them on to kill
+down each other; while they quietly drew into Constantinople the
+boundless crops of Asia, Syria and Egypt.
+
+The strength of Constantinople was infinite--commanding two seas and two
+continents.  It is, as the genius of Constantinople saw--as the genius of
+the Czar Nicholas saw--the strongest spot, perhaps, in the world.  That
+fact was what enabled Justinian's Empire to arise again, and enabled
+Belisarius and Narses to reconquer Africa and Italy.  Remember that, and
+see how strong the Romans were still.
+
+The Teutons meanwhile had changed their front, by conquering the Western
+Mediterranean, and were becoming weak, because scattered on exterior
+lines, to their extreme danger.
+
+I cannot exaggerate the danger of that position.  It enabled the Romans
+by rapid movements of their fleets, to reconquer Africa and Italy.  It
+might have enabled them to do much more.
+
+Belisarius, with great wisdom, began by attacking the Vandals at Carthage
+on the extreme right.  They had put themselves into an isolated position,
+and were destroyed without help.  Then he moved on Italy and the
+Ostrogoths.  He was going to force the positions in detail, and drive
+them back behind the Alps.  What he did not finish, Narses did; and the
+Teutons were actually driven back behind the Alps for some years.
+
+But Narses had to stop at Italy.  Even if not recalled, he could have
+gone no further.  The next move should have been on Spain, if he had
+really had strength in Italy.  But to attack Spain from Constantinople,
+would have been to go too far from home.  The Franks would have crost the
+Pyrenees, and fallen on his flank.  The Visigoths, even if beaten, would
+have been only pushed across the Straits of Gibraltar, to reconquer the
+Vandal coast of Africa; while to take troops from Italy for any such
+purpose, would have been to let in the Lombards--who came, let in or not.
+There were reserves in Germany still, of which Narses knew full well; for
+he had seen 5000 Lombards, besides Herules, and Huns, and Avars, fight
+for him at Nuceria, and destroy the Ostrogoths; and he knew well that
+they could, if they chose, fight against him.
+
+On the other hand, the Roman Empire had no reserves; while the campaign
+had just come to that point at which he who can bring up the last reserve
+wins.  Ours were so far from being exhausted, that the heaviest of them,
+the Franks, came into action, stronger than ever, 200 years after.
+
+But the Roman reserves were gone.  If Greece, if Asia Minor, if Egypt,
+had been the holds of a hardy people, the Romans might have done
+still--Heaven alone knows what.  At least, they might have extended their
+front once more to the line of Carthage, Sicily, Italy.
+
+But the people of Syria and Egypt, were--what they were.  No recruits, as
+far as I know, were drawn from them.  Had they been, they would have been
+face to face with a Frank, or a Lombard, or a Visigoth, much what--not a
+Sikh, a Rohilla, or a Ghoorka, but a Bengalee proper--would be face to
+face with an Englishman.  One thousand Varangers might have walked from
+Constantinople to Alexandria without fighting a pitched battle, if they
+had had only Greeks and Syrians to face.
+
+Thus the Romans were growing weak.  If we had lost, so had they.  Every
+wild Teuton who came down to perish, had destroyed a Roman, or more than
+one, before he died.  Each column which the admirable skill and courage
+of the Romans had destroyed, had weakened them as much, perhaps more,
+than its destruction weakened the Teutons; and had, by harrying the
+country, destroyed the Roman's power of obtaining supplies.  Italy and
+Turkey at last became too poor to be a fighting ground at all.
+
+But now comes in one of the strangest new elements in this strange
+epic--Mohammed and his Arabs.
+
+Suddenly, these Arab tribes, under the excitement of the new Mussulman
+creed, burst forth of the unknown East.  They take the Eastern Empire in
+the rear; by such a rear attack as the world never saw before or since;
+they cut it in two; devour it up: and save Europe thereby.
+
+That may seem a strange speech.  I must explain it.  I have told you how
+the Eastern Empire and its military position was immensely strong; that
+Constantinople was a great maritime base of operations, mistress of the
+Mediterranean.  What prevented the Romans from reconquering all the
+shores of that sea, and establishing themselves in strength in the Morea,
+or in Sicily, or in Carthage, or in any central base of operations?  What
+forced them to cling to Constantinople, and fight a losing campaign
+thenceforth.  Simply this; the Mussulman had forced their position from
+the rear, and deprived them of Syria, Egypt, Africa.
+
+But the Teutons could not have opposed them.  During the 7th century the
+Lombards in Italy were lazy and divided; the Goths in Spain lazier and
+more divided still; the Franks were tearing themselves in pieces by civil
+war.  The years from A.D. 550 to A.D. 750 and the rise of the
+Carlovingian dynasty, were a period of exhaustion for our race, such as
+follows on great victories, and the consequent slaughter and collapse.
+
+This was the critical period of the Teutonic race; little talked of,
+because little known: but very perilous.  Nevertheless, whatever the
+Eastern Empire might have done, the Saracens prevented its doing; and if
+you hold (with me) that the welfare of the Teutonic race is the welfare
+of the world; then, meaning nothing less, the Saracen invasion, by
+crippling the Eastern Empire, saved Europe and our race.
+
+And now, gentlemen, was this vast campaign fought without a general?  If
+Trafalgar could not be won without the mind of a Nelson, or Waterloo
+without the mind of a Wellington, was there no one mind to lead those
+innumerable armies, on whose success depended the future of the whole
+human race?  Did no one marshal them in that impregnable convex front,
+from the Euxine to the North Sea?  No one guide them to the two great
+strategic centres, of the Black Forest and Trieste?  No one cause them,
+blind barbarians without maps or science, to follow those rules of war,
+without which victory in a protracted struggle is impossible; and by the
+pressure of the Huns behind, force on their flagging myriads to an
+enterprise which their simplicity fancied at first beyond the powers of
+mortal men?  Believe it who will: but I cannot.  I may be told that they
+gravitated into their places, as stones and mud do.  Be it so.  They
+obeyed natural laws of course, as all things do on earth, when they
+obeyed the laws of war: those too are natural laws, explicable on simple
+mathematical principles.  But while I believe that not a stone or a
+handful of mud gravitates into its place without the will of God; that it
+was ordained, ages since, into what particular spot each grain of gold
+should be washed down from an Australian quartz reef, that a certain man
+might find it at a certain moment and crisis of his life;--if I be
+superstitious enough (as thank God I am) to hold that creed, shall I not
+believe that though this great war had no general upon earth, it may have
+had a general in Heaven? and that in spite of all their sins, the hosts
+of our forefathers were the hosts of God?
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX: THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE AS APPLIED TO HISTORY.
+
+
+It is with a feeling of awe, I had almost said of fear, that I find
+myself in this place, upon this errand.  The responsibility of a teacher
+of History in Cambridge is in itself very heavy: but doubly heavy in the
+case of one who sees among his audience many men as fit, it may be some
+more fit, to fill this Chair: and again, more heavy still, when one
+succeeds to a man whose learning, like his virtues, one can never hope to
+equal.
+
+But a Professor, I trust, is like other men, capable of improvement; and
+the great law, 'docendo disces,' may be fulfilled in him, as in other
+men.  Meanwhile, I can only promise that such small powers as I possess
+will be honestly devoted to this Professorate; and that I shall endeavour
+to teach Modern History after a method which shall give satisfaction to
+the Rulers of this University.
+
+I shall do that best, I believe, by keeping in mind the lessons which I,
+in common with thousands more, have learnt from my wise and good
+predecessor.  I do not mean merely patience in research, and accuracy in
+fact.  They are required of all men: and they may be learnt from many
+men.  But what Sir James Stephen's life and writings should especially
+teach us, is the beauty and the value of charity; of that large-hearted
+humanity, which sympathizes with all noble, generous, earnest thought and
+endeavour, in whatsoever shape they may have appeared; a charity which,
+without weakly or lazily confounding the eternal laws of right and wrong,
+can make allowances for human frailty; can separate the good from the
+evil in men and in theories; can understand, and can forgive, because it
+loves.  Who can read Sir James Stephen's works without feeling more
+kindly toward many a man, and many a form of thought, against which he
+has been more or less prejudiced; without a more genial view of human
+nature, a more hopeful view of human destiny, a more full belief in the
+great saying, that 'Wisdom is justified of all her children'?  Who, too,
+can read those works without seeing how charity enlightens the intellect,
+just as bigotry darkens it; how events, which to the theorist and the
+pedant are merely monstrous and unmeaning, may explain themselves easily
+enough to the man who will put himself in his fellow-creatures' place;
+who will give them credit for being men of like passions with himself;
+who will see with their eyes, feel with their hearts, and take for his
+motto, 'Homo sum, nil humani a me alienum puto'?
+
+I entreat gentlemen who may hereafter attend my lectures to bear in mind
+this last saying.  If they wish to understand History, they must first
+try to understand men and women.  For History is the history of men and
+women, and of nothing else; and he who knows men and women thoroughly
+will best understand the past work of the world, and be best able to
+carry on its work now.  The men who, in the long run, have governed the
+world, have been those who understood the human heart; and therefore it
+is to this day the statesman who keeps the reins in his hand, and not the
+mere student.  He is a man of the world; he knows how to manage his
+fellow-men; and therefore he can get work done which the mere student (it
+may be) has taught him ought to be done; but which the mere student, much
+less the mere trader or economist, could not get done; simply because his
+fellow-men would probably not listen to him, and certainly outwit him.  Of
+course, in proportion to the depth, width, soundness, of his conception
+of human nature, will be the greatness and wholesomeness of his power.  He
+may appeal to the meanest, or to the loftiest motives.  He may be a fox
+or an eagle; a Borgia, or a Hildebrand; a Talleyrand, or a Napoleon; a
+Mary Stuart, or an Elizabeth: but however base, however noble, the power
+which he exercises is the same in essence.  He makes History, because he
+understands men.  And you, if you would understand History, must
+understand men.
+
+If, therefore, any of you should ask me how to study history, I should
+answer--Take by all means biographies: wheresoever possible,
+autobiographies; and study them.  Fill your minds with live human
+figures; men of like passions with yourselves; see how each lived and
+worked in the time and place in which God put him.  Believe me, that when
+you have thus made a friend of the dead, and brought him to life again,
+and let him teach you to see with his eyes, and feel with his heart, you
+will begin to understand more of his generation and his circumstances,
+than all the mere history-books of the period would teach you.  In
+proportion as you understand the man, and only so, will you begin to
+understand the elements in which he worked.  And not only to understand,
+but to remember.  Names, dates, genealogies, geographical details,
+costumes, fashions, manners, crabbed scraps of old law, which you used,
+perhaps, to read up and forget again, because they were not rooted, but
+stuck into your brain, as pins are into a pincushion, to fall out at the
+first shake--all these you will remember; because they will arrange and
+organize themselves around the central human figure: just as, if you have
+studied a portrait by some great artist, you cannot think of the face in
+it, without recollecting also the light and shadow, the tone of
+colouring, the dress, the very details of the background, and all the
+accessories which the painter's art has grouped around; each with a
+purpose, and therefore each fixing itself duly in your mind.  Who, for
+instance, has not found that he can learn more French history from French
+memoirs, than even from all the truly learned and admirable histories of
+France which have been written of late years?  There are those, too, who
+will say of good old Plutarch's lives (now-a-days, I think, too much
+neglected), what some great man used to say of Shakspeare and English
+history--that all the ancient history which they really knew, they had
+got from Plutarch.  I am free to confess that I have learnt what little I
+know of the middle-ages, what they were like, how they came to be what
+they were, and how they issued in the Reformation, not so much from the
+study of the books about them (many and wise though they are), as from
+the thumbing over, for years, the semi-mythical saints' lives of Surius
+and the Bollandists.
+
+Without doubt History obeys, and always has obeyed, in the long run,
+certain laws.  But those laws assert themselves, and are to be
+discovered, not in things, but in persons; in the actions of human
+beings; and just in proportion as we understand human beings, shall we
+understand the laws which they have obeyed, or which have avenged
+themselves on their disobedience.  This may seem a truism: if it be such,
+it is one which we cannot too often repeat to ourselves just now, when
+the rapid progress of science is tempting us to look at human beings
+rather as things than as persons, and at abstractions (under the name of
+laws) rather as persons than as things.  Discovering, to our just
+delight, order and law all around us, in a thousand events which seemed
+to our fathers fortuitous and arbitrary, we are dazzled just now by the
+magnificent prospect opening before us, and fall, too often, into more
+than one serious mistake.
+
+First; students try to explain too often all the facts which they meet by
+the very few laws which they know; and especially moral phaenomena by
+physical, or at least economic laws.  There is an excuse for this last
+error.  Much which was thought, a few centuries since, to belong to the
+spiritual world, is now found to belong to the material; and the
+physician is consulted, where the exorcist used to be called in.  But it
+is a somewhat hasty corollary therefrom, and one not likely to find
+favour in this University, that moral laws and spiritual agencies have
+nothing at all to do with the history of the human race.  We shall not be
+inclined here, I trust, to explain (as some one tried to do lately) the
+Crusades by a hypothesis of over-stocked labour-markets on the Continent.
+
+Neither, again, shall we be inclined to class those same Crusades among
+'popular delusions,' and mere outbursts of folly and madness.  This is a
+very easy, and I am sorry to say, a very common method of disposing of
+facts which will not fit into the theory, too common of late, that need
+and greed have been always, and always ought to be, the chief motives of
+mankind.  Need and greed, heaven knows, are powerful enough: but I think
+that he who has something nobler in himself than need and greed, will
+have eyes to discern something nobler than them, in the most fantastic
+superstitions, in the most ferocious outbursts, of the most untutored
+masses.  Thank God, that those who preach the opposite doctrine belie it
+so often by a happy inconsistency; that he who declares self-interest to
+be the mainspring of the world, can live a life of virtuous
+self-sacrifice; that he who denies, with Spinoza, the existence of free-
+will, can disprove his own theory, by willing, like Spinoza, amid all the
+temptations of the world, to live a life worthy of a Roman Stoic; and
+that he who represents men as the puppets of material circumstance, and
+who therefore has no logical right either to praise virtue, or to blame
+vice, can shew, by a healthy admiration of the former, a healthy scorn of
+the latter, how little his heart has been corrupted by the eidola specus,
+the phantoms of the study, which have oppressed his brain.  But though
+men are often, thank heaven, better than their doctrines, yet the
+goodness of the man does not make his doctrine good; and it is immoral as
+well as unphilosophical to call a thing hard names simply because it
+cannot be fitted into our theory of the universe.  Immoral, because all
+harsh and hasty wholesale judgments are immoral; unphilosophical, because
+the only philosophical method of looking at the strangest of phaenomena
+is to believe that it too is the result of law, perhaps a healthy result;
+that it is not to be condemned as a product of disease before it is
+proven to be such; and that if it be a product of disease, disease has
+its laws, as much as health; and is a subject, not for cursing, but for
+induction; so that (to return to my example) if every man who ever took
+part in the Crusades were proved to have been simply mad, our sole
+business would be to discover why he went mad upon that special matter,
+and at that special time.  And to do that, we must begin by recollecting
+that in every man who went forth to the Crusades, or to any other strange
+adventure of humanity, was a whole human heart and brain, of like
+strength and weakness, like hopes, like temptations, with our own; and
+find out what may have driven him mad, by considering what would have
+driven us mad in his place.
+
+May I be permitted to enlarge somewhat on this topic?  There is, as you
+are aware, a demand just now for philosophies of History.  The general
+spread of Inductive Science has awakened this appetite; the admirable
+contemporary French historians have quickened it by feeding it; till, the
+more order and sequence we find in the facts of the past, the more we
+wish to find.  So it should be (or why was man created a rational being?)
+and so it is; and the requirements of the more educated are becoming so
+peremptory, that many thinking men would be ready to say (I should be
+sorry to endorse their opinion), that if History is not studied according
+to exact scientific method, it need not be studied at all.
+
+A very able anonymous writer has lately expressed this general tendency
+of modern thought in language so clear and forcible that I must beg leave
+to quote it:--
+
+'Step by step,' he says, 'the notion of evolution by law is transforming
+the whole field of our knowledge and opinion.  It is not one order of
+conception which comes under its influence: but it is the whole sphere of
+our ideas, and with them the whole system of our action and conduct.  Not
+the physical world alone is now the domain of inductive science, but the
+moral, the intellectual, and the spiritual are being added to its empire.
+Two co-ordinate ideas pervade the vision of every thinker, physicist or
+moralist, philosopher or priest.  In the physical and the moral world, in
+the natural and the human, are ever seen two forces--invariable rule, and
+continual advance; law and action; order and progress; these two powers
+working harmoniously together, and the result, inevitable sequence,
+orderly movement, irresistible growth.  In the physical world indeed,
+order is most prominent to our eyes; in the moral world it is progress,
+but both exist as truly in the one as in the other.  In the scale of
+nature, as we rise from the inorganic to the organic, the idea of change
+becomes even more distinct; just as when we rise through the gradations
+of the moral world, the idea of order becomes more difficult to grasp.  It
+was the last task of the astronomer to show eternal change even in the
+grand order of our Solar System.  It is the crown of philosophy to see
+immutable law even in the complex action of human life.  In the latter,
+indeed, it is but the first germs which are clear.  No rational thinker
+hopes to discover more than some few primary actions of law, and some
+approximative theory of growth.  Much is dark and contradictory.  Numerous
+theories differing in method and degree are offered; nor do we decide
+between them.  We insist now only upon this, that the principle of
+development in the moral, as in the physical, has been definitely
+admitted; and something like a conception of one grand analogy through
+the whole sphere of knowledge, has almost become a part of popular
+opinion.  Most men shrink from any broad statement of the principle,
+though all in some special instances adopt it.  It surrounds every idea
+of our life, and is diffused in every branch of study.  The press, the
+platform, the lecture-room, and the pulpit ring with it in every variety
+of form.  Unconscious pedants are proving it.  It flashes on the
+statistician through his registers; it guides the hand of simple
+philanthropy; it is obeyed by the instinct of the statesman.  There is
+not an act of our public life which does not acknowledge it.  No man
+denies that there are certain, and even practical laws of political
+economy.  They are nothing but laws of society.  The conferences of
+social reformers, the congresses for international statistics and for
+social science bear witness of its force.  Everywhere we hear of the
+development of the constitution, of public law, of public opinion, of
+institutions, of forms of society, of theories of history.  In a word,
+whatever views of history may be inculcated on the Universities by
+novelists or epigrammatists, it is certain that the best intellects and
+spirits of our day are labouring to see more of that invariable order,
+and of that principle of growth in the life of human societies and of the
+great society of mankind which nearly all men, more or less, acknowledge,
+and partially and unconsciously confirm.'
+
+This passage expresses admirably, I think, the tendencies of modern
+thought for good and evil.
+
+For good.  For surely it is good, and a thing to thank God for, that men
+should be more and more expecting order, searching for order, welcoming
+order.  But for evil also.  For young sciences, like young men, have
+their time of wonder, hope, imagination, and of passion too, and haste,
+and bigotry.  Dazzled, and that pardonably, by the beauty of the few laws
+they may have discovered, they are too apt to erect them into gods, and
+to explain by them all matters in heaven and earth; and apt, too, as I
+think this author does, to patch them where they are weakest, by that
+most dangerous succedaneum of vague and grand epithets, which very often
+contain, each of them, an assumption far more important than the law to
+which they are tacked.
+
+Such surely are the words which so often occur in this
+passage--'Invariable, continual, immutable, inevitable, irresistible.'
+There is an ambiguity in these words, which may lead--which I believe
+does lead--to most unphilosophical conclusions.  They are used very much
+as synonyms; not merely in this passage, but in the mouths of men.  Are
+you aware that those who carelessly do so, blink the whole of the world-
+old arguments between necessity and free-will?  Whatever may be the
+rights of that quarrel, they are certainly not to be assumed in a passing
+epithet.  But what else does the writer do, who tells us that an
+inevitable sequence, an irresistible growth, exists in the moral as well
+as in the physical world; and then says, as a seemingly identical
+statement, that it is the crown of philosophy to see immutable law, even
+in the complex action of human life?
+
+The crown of philosophy?  Doubtless it is so.  But not a crown, I should
+have thought, which has been reserved as the special glory of these
+latter days.  Very early, at least in the known history of mankind, did
+Philosophy (under the humble names of Religion and Common Sense) see most
+immutable, and even eternal, laws, in the complex action of human life,
+even the laws of right and wrong; and called them The Everlasting
+Judgments of God, to which a confused and hard-worked man was to look;
+and take comfort, for all would be well at last.  By fair induction (as I
+believe) did man discover, more or less clearly, those eternal laws: by
+repeated verifications of them in every age, man has been rising, and
+will yet rise, to clearer insight into their essence, their limits, their
+practical results.  And if it be these, the old laws of right and wrong,
+which this author and his school call invariable and immutable, we shall,
+I trust, most heartily agree with them; only wondering why a moral
+government of the world seems to them so very recent a discovery.
+
+But we shall not agree with them, I trust, when they represent these
+invariable and immutable laws as resulting in any inevitable sequence, or
+irresistible growth.  We shall not deny a sequence--Reason forbids that;
+or again, a growth--Experience forbids that: but we shall be puzzled to
+see why a law, because it is immutable itself, should produce inevitable
+results; and if they quote the facts of material nature against us, we
+shall be ready to meet them on that very ground, and ask:--You say that
+as the laws of matter are inevitable, so probably are the laws of human
+life?  Be it so: but in what sense are the laws of matter inevitable?
+Potentially, or actually?  Even in the seemingly most uniform and
+universal law, where do we find the inevitable or the irresistible?  Is
+there not in nature a perpetual competition of law against law, force
+against force, producing the most endless and unexpected variety of
+results?  Cannot each law be interfered with at any moment by some other
+law, so that the first law, though it may struggle for the mastery, shall
+be for an indefinite time utterly defeated?  The law of gravity is
+immutable enough: but do all stones inevitably fall to the ground?
+Certainly not, if I choose to catch one, and keep it in my hand.  It
+remains there by laws; and the law of gravity is there too, making it
+feel heavy in my hand: but it has not fallen to the ground, and will not,
+till I let it.  So much for the inevitable action of the laws of gravity,
+as of others.  Potentially, it is immutable; but actually it can be
+conquered by other laws.
+
+I really beg your pardon for occupying you here with such truisms: but I
+must put the students of this University in mind of them, as long as too
+many modern thinkers shall choose to ignore them.
+
+Even if then, as it seems to me, the history of mankind depended merely
+on physical laws, analogous to those which govern the rest of nature, it
+would be a hopeless task for us to discover an inevitable sequence in
+History, even though we might suppose that such existed.  But as long as
+man has the mysterious power of breaking the laws of his own being, such
+a sequence not only cannot be discovered, but it cannot exist.  For man
+can break the laws of his own being, whether physical, intellectual, or
+moral.  He breaks them every day, and has always been breaking them.
+
+The greater number of them he cannot obey till he knows them.  And too
+many of them he cannot know, alas, till he has broken them; and paid the
+penalty of his ignorance.  He does not, like the brute or the vegetable,
+thrive by laws of which he is not conscious: but by laws of which he
+becomes gradually conscious; and which he can disobey after all.  And
+therefore it seems to me very like a juggle of words to draw analogies
+from the physical and irrational world, and apply them to the moral and
+rational world; and most unwise to bridge over the gulf between the two
+by such adjectives as 'irresistible' or 'inevitable,' such nouns as
+'order, sequence, law'--which must bear an utterly different meaning,
+according as they are applied to physical beings or to moral ones.
+
+Indeed, so patent is the ambiguity, that I cannot fancy that it has
+escaped the author and his school; and am driven, by mere respect for
+their logical powers, to suppose that they mean no ambiguity at all; that
+they do not conceive of irrational beings as differing from rational
+beings, or the physical from the moral, or the body of man from his
+spirit, in kind and property; and that the immutable laws which they
+represent as governing human life and history have nothing at all to do
+with those laws of right and wrong, which I intend to set forth to you,
+as the 'everlasting judgments of God.'
+
+In which case, I fear, they must go their way; while we go ours;
+confessing that there is an order, and there is a law, for man; and that
+if he disturb that order, or break that law in anywise, they will prove
+themselves too strong for him, and reassert themselves, and go forward,
+grinding him to powder if he stubbornly try to stop their way.  But we
+must assert too, that his disobedience to them, even for a moment, has
+disturbed the natural course of events, and broken that inevitable
+sequence, which we may find indeed, in our own imaginations, as long as
+we sit with a book in our studies: but which vanishes the moment that we
+step outside into practical contact with life; and, instead of talking
+cheerfully of a necessary and orderly progress, find ourselves more
+inclined to cry with the cynical man of the world:
+
+   'All the windy ways of men,
+      Are but dust that rises up;
+   And is lightly laid again.'
+
+The usual rejoinder to this argument is to fall back upon man's weakness
+and ignorance, and to take refuge in the infinite unknown.  Man, it is
+said, may of course interfere a little with some of the less important
+laws of his being: but who is he, to grapple with the more vast and
+remote ones?  Because he can prevent a pebble from falling, is he to
+suppose that he can alter the destiny of nations, and grapple forsooth
+with 'the eternities and the immensities,' and so forth?  The argument is
+very powerful: but addrest rather to the imagination than the reason.  It
+is, after all, another form of the old omne ignotum pro magnifico; and we
+may answer, I think fairly--About the eternities and immensities we know
+nothing, not having been there as yet; but it is a mere assumption to
+suppose, without proof, that the more remote and impalpable laws are more
+vast, in the sense of being more powerful (the only sense which really
+bears upon the argument), than the laws which are palpably at work around
+us all day long; and if we are capable of interfering with almost every
+law of human life which we know of already, it is more philosophical to
+believe (till disproved by actual failure) that we can interfere with
+those laws of our life which we may know hereafter.  Whether it will pay
+us to interfere with them, is a different question.  It is not prudent to
+interfere with the laws of health, and it may not be with other laws,
+hereafter to be discovered.  I am only pleading that man can disobey the
+laws of his being; that such power has always been a disturbing force in
+the progress of the human race, which modern theories too hastily
+overlook; and that the science of history (unless the existence of the
+human will be denied) must belong rather to the moral sciences, than to
+that 'positive science' which seems to me inclined to reduce all human
+phaenomena under physical laws, hastily assumed, by the old fallacy of
+[Greek text], to apply where there is no proof whatsoever that they do or
+even can apply.
+
+As for the question of the existence of the human will--I am not here, I
+hope, to argue that.  I shall only beg leave to assume its existence, for
+practical purposes.  I may be told (though I trust not in this
+University), that it is, like the undulatory theory of light, an
+unphilosophical 'hypothesis.'  Be that as it may, it is very convenient
+(and may be for a few centuries to come) to retain the said 'hypothesis,'
+as one retains the undulatory theory; and for the simple reason, that
+with it one can explain the phaenomena tolerably; and without it cannot
+explain them at all.
+
+A dread (half-unconscious, it may be) of this last practical result,
+seems to have crossed the mind of the author on whom I have been
+commenting; for he confesses, honestly enough (and he writes throughout
+like an honest man) that in human life 'no rational thinker hopes to
+discover more than some few primary actions of law, and some
+approximative theory of growth.'  I have higher hopes of a possible
+science of history; because I fall back on those old moral laws, which I
+think he wishes to ignore: but I can conceive that he will not; because
+he cannot, on his own definitions of law and growth.  They are (if I
+understand him aright) to be irresistible and inevitable.  I say that
+they are not so, even in the case of trees and stones; much more in the
+world of man.  Facts, when he goes on to verify his theories, will leave
+him with a very few primary actions of law, a very faint approximative
+theory; because his theories, in plain English, will not work.  At the
+first step, at every step, they are stopped short by those disturbing
+forces, or at least disturbed phaenomena, which have been as yet, and
+probably will be hereafter, attributed (as the only explanation of them)
+to the existence, for good and evil, of a human will.
+
+Let us look in detail at a few of these disturbances of anything like
+inevitable or irresistible movement.  Shall we not, at the very first
+glance, confess--I am afraid only too soon--that there always have been
+fools therein; fools of whom no man could guess, or can yet, what they
+were going to do next or why they were going to do it?  And how, pray,
+can we talk of the inevitable, in the face of that one miserable fact of
+human folly, whether of ignorance or of passion, folly still?  There may
+be laws of folly, as there are laws of disease; and whether there are or
+not, we may learn much wisdom from folly; we may see what the true laws
+of humanity are, by seeing the penalties which come from breaking them:
+but as for laws which work of themselves, by an irresistible
+movement,--how can we discover such in a past in which every law which we
+know has been outraged again and again?  Take one of the highest
+instances--the progress of the human intellect--I do not mean just now
+the spread of conscious science, but of that unconscious science which we
+call common sense.  What hope have we of laying down exact laws for its
+growth, in a world wherein it has been ignored, insulted, crushed, a
+thousand times, sometimes in whole nations and for whole generations, by
+the stupidity, tyranny, greed, caprice of a single ruler; or if not so,
+yet by the mere superstition, laziness, sensuality, anarchy of the mob?
+How, again, are we to arrive at any exact laws of the increase of
+population, in a race which has had, from the beginning, the abnormal and
+truly monstrous habit of slaughtering each other, not for food--for in a
+race of normal cannibals, the ratio of increase or decrease might easily
+be calculated--but uselessly, from rage, hate, fanaticism, or even mere
+wantonness?  No man is less inclined than I to undervalue vital
+statistics, and their already admirable results: but how can they help
+us, and how can we help them, in looking at such a past as that of three-
+fourths of the nations of the world?  Look--as a single instance among
+too many--at that most noble nation of Germany, swept and stunned, by
+peasant wars, thirty years' wars, French wars, and after each hurricane,
+blossoming up again into brave industry and brave thought, to be in its
+turn cut off by a fresh storm ere it could bear full fruit: doing
+nevertheless such work, against such fearful disadvantages, as nation
+never did before; and proving thereby what she might have done for
+humanity, had not she, the mother of all European life, been devoured,
+generation after generation, by her own unnatural children.  Nevertheless,
+she is their mother still; and her history, as I believe, the
+root-history of Europe: but it is hard to read--the sibylline leaves are
+so fantastically torn, the characters so blotted out by tears and blood.
+
+And if such be the history of not one nation only, but of the average,
+how, I ask, are we to make calculations about such a species as man?  Many
+modern men of science wish to draw the normal laws of human life from the
+average of humanity: I question whether they can do so; because I do not
+believe the average man to be the normal man, exhibiting the normal laws:
+but a very abnormal man, diseased and crippled, but even if their method
+were correct, it could work in practice, only if the destinies of men
+were always decided by majorities: and granting that the majority of men
+have common sense, are the minority of fools to count for nothing?  Are
+they powerless?  Have they had no influence on History?  Have they even
+been always a minority, and not at times a terrible majority, doing each
+that which was right in the sight of his own eyes?  You can surely answer
+that question for yourselves.  As far as my small knowledge of History
+goes, I think it may be proved from facts, that any given people, down to
+the lowest savages, has, at any period of its life, known far more than
+it has done; known quite enough to have enabled it to have got on
+comfortably, thriven, and developed; if it had only done, what no man
+does, all that it knew it ought to do, and could do.  St. Paul's
+experience of himself is true of all mankind--'The good which I would, I
+do not; and the evil which I would not, that I do.'  The discrepancy
+between the amount of knowledge and the amount of work, is one of the
+most patent and most painful facts which strikes us in the history of
+man; and one not certainly to be explained on any theory of man's
+progress being the effect of inevitable laws, or one which gives us much
+hope of ascertaining fixed laws for that progress.
+
+And bear in mind, that fools are not always merely imbecile and
+obstructive; they are at times ferocious, dangerous, mad.  There is in
+human nature what Goethe used to call a demoniac element, defying all
+law, and all induction; and we can, I fear, from that one cause, as
+easily calculate the progress of the human race, as we can calculate that
+of the vines upon the slopes of AEtna, with the lava ready to boil up and
+overwhelm them at any and every moment.  Let us learn, in God's name, all
+we can, from the short intervals of average peace and common sense: let
+us, or rather our grandchildren, get precious lessons from them for the
+next period of sanity.  But let us not be surprised, much less
+disheartened, if after learning a very little, some unexpected and truly
+demoniac factor, Anabaptist war, French revolution, or other, should toss
+all our calculations to the winds, and set us to begin afresh, sadder and
+wiser men.  We may learn, doubtless, even more of the real facts of human
+nature, the real laws of human history, from these critical periods, when
+the root-fibres of the human heart are laid bare, for good and evil, than
+from any smooth and respectable periods of peace and plenty: nevertheless
+their lessons are not statistical, but moral.
+
+But if human folly has been a disturbing force for evil, surely human
+reason has been a disturbing force for good.  Man can not only disobey
+the laws of his being, he can also choose between them, to an extent
+which science widens every day, and so become, what he was meant to be,
+an artificial being; artificial in his manufactures, habits, society,
+polity--what not?  All day long he has a free choice between even
+physical laws, which mere things have not, and which make the laws of
+mere things inapplicable to him.  Take the simplest case.  If he falls
+into the water, he has his choice whether he will obey the laws of
+gravity and sink, or by other laws perform the (to him) artificial
+process of swimming, and get ashore.  True, both would happen by law: but
+he has his choice which law shall conquer, sink or swim.  We have yet to
+learn why whole nations, why all mankind may not use the same prudential
+power as to which law they shall obey,--which, without breaking it, they
+shall conquer and repress, as long as seems good to them.
+
+It is true, nature must be obeyed in order that she may he conquered: but
+then she is to be CONQUERED.  It has been too much the fashion of late to
+travestie that great dictum of Bacon's into a very different one, and
+say, Nature must be obeyed because she cannot be conquered; thus
+proclaiming the impotence of science to discover anything save her own
+impotence--a result as contrary to fact, as to Bacon's own hopes of what
+science would do for the welfare of the human race.  For what is all
+human invention, but the transcending and conquering one natural law by
+another?  What is the practical answer which all mankind has been making
+to nature and her pretensions, whenever it has progressed one step since
+the foundation of the world: by which all discoverers have discovered,
+all teachers taught: by which all polities, kingdoms, civilizations,
+arts, manufactures, have established themselves; all who have raised
+themselves above the mob have faced the mob, and conquered the mob,
+crucified by them first and worshipped by them afterwards: by which the
+first savage conquered the natural law which put wild beasts in the
+forest, by killing them; conquered the natural law which makes raw meat
+wholesome, by cooking it; conquered the natural law which made weeds grow
+at his hut door, by rooting them up, and planting corn instead; and won
+his first spurs in the great battle of man against nature, proving
+thereby that he was a man, and not an ape?  What but this?--'Nature is
+strong, but I am stronger.  I know her worth, but I know my own.  I trust
+her and her laws, but my trusty servant she shall be, and not my tyrant;
+and if she interfere with my ideal, even with my personal comfort, then
+Nature and I will fight it out to the last gasp, and Heaven defend the
+right!'
+
+In forgetting this, in my humble opinion, lay the error of the early, or
+laissez faire School of Political Economy.  It was too much inclined to
+say to men: 'You are the puppets of certain natural laws.  Your own
+freewill and choice, if they really exist, exist merely as a dangerous
+disease.  All you can do is to submit to the laws, and drift
+whithersoever they may carry you, for good or evil.'  But not less
+certainly was the same blame to be attached to the French Socialist
+School.  It, though based on a revolt from the Philosophie du neant,
+philosophie de la misere, as it used to term the laissez faire School,
+yet retained the worst fallacy of its foe, namely, that man was the
+creature of circumstances; and denied him just as much as its antagonist
+the possession of freewill, or at least the right to use freewill on any
+large scale.
+
+The laissez faire School was certainly the more logical of the two.  With
+them, if man was the creature of circumstances, those circumstances were
+at least defined for him by external laws which he had not created: while
+the Socialists, with Fourier at their head (as it has always seemed to
+me), fell into the extraordinary paradox of supposing that though man was
+the creature of circumstances, he was to become happy by creating the
+very circumstances which were afterwards to create him.  But both of them
+erred, surely, in ignoring that self-arbitrating power of man, by which
+he can, for good or for evil, rebel against and conquer circumstance.
+
+I am not, surely, overstepping my province as Professor of History, in
+alluding to this subject.  Just notions of Political Economy are
+absolutely necessary to just notions of History; and I should wish those
+young gentlemen who may attend my Lectures, to go first, were it
+possible, to my more learned brother, the Professor of Political Economy,
+and get from him not merely exact habits of thought, but a knowledge
+which I cannot give, and yet which they ought to possess.  For to take
+the very lowest ground, the first fact of history is, Bouche va toujours;
+whatever men have or have not done, they have always eaten, or tried to
+eat; and the laws which regulate the supply of the first necessaries of
+life are, after all, the first which should be learnt, and the last which
+should be ignored.
+
+The more modern school, however, of Political Economy while giving due
+weight to circumstance, has refused to acknowledge it as the force which
+ought to determine all human life; and our greatest living political
+economist has, in his Essay on Liberty, put in a plea unequalled since
+the Areopagitica of Milton, for the self-determining power of the
+individual, and for his right to use that power.
+
+But my business is not with rights, so much as with facts; and as a fact,
+surely, one may say, that this inventive reason of man has been, in all
+ages, interfering with any thing like an inevitable sequence or orderly
+progress of humanity.  Some of those writers, indeed, who are most
+anxious to discover an exact order, are most loud in their complaints
+that it has been interfered with by over-legislation; and rejoice that
+mankind is returning to a healthier frame of mind, and leaving nature
+alone to her own work in her own way.  I do not altogether agree with
+their complaints; but of that I hope to speak in subsequent lectures.
+Meanwhile, I must ask, if (as is said) most good legislation now-a-days
+consists in repealing old laws which ought never to have been passed; if
+(as is said) the great fault of our forefathers was that they were
+continually setting things wrong, by intermeddling in matters political,
+economic, religious, which should have been let alone, to develop
+themselves in their own way, what becomes of the inevitable laws, and the
+continuous progress, of the human mind?
+
+Look again at the disturbing power, not merely of the general reason of
+the many, but of the genius of the few.  I am not sure, but that the one
+fact, that genius is occasionally present in the world, is not enough to
+prevent our ever discovering any regular sequence in human progress, past
+or future.
+
+Let me explain myself.  In addition to the infinite variety of individual
+characters continually born (in itself a cause of perpetual disturbance),
+man alone of all species has the faculty of producing, from time to time,
+individuals immeasurably superior to the average in some point or other,
+whom we call men of genius.  Like Mr. Babbage's calculating machine,
+human nature gives millions of orderly respectable common-place results,
+which any statistician can classify, and enables hasty philosophers to
+say--It always has gone on thus; it must go on thus always; when behold,
+after many millions of orderly results, there turns up a seemingly
+disorderly, a certainly unexpected, result, and the law seems broken
+(being really superseded by some deeper law) for that once, and perhaps
+never again for centuries.  Even so it is with man, and the physiological
+laws which determine the earthly appearance of men.  Laws there are,
+doubt it not; but they are beyond us: and let our induction be as wide as
+it may, they will baffle it; and great nature, just as we fancy we have
+found out her secret, will smile in our faces as she brings into the
+world a man, the like of whom we have never seen, and cannot explain,
+define, classify--in one word, a genius.  Such do, as a fact, become
+leaders of men into quite new and unexpected paths, and, for good or
+evil, leave their stamp upon whole generations and races.  Notorious as
+this may be, it is just, I think, what most modern theories of human
+progress ignore.  They take the actions and the tendencies of the average
+many, and from them construct their scheme: a method not perhaps quite
+safe were they dealing with plants or animals; but what if it be the very
+peculiarity of this fantastic and altogether unique creature called man,
+not only that he develops, from time to time, these exceptional
+individuals, but that they are the most important individuals of all?
+that his course is decided for him not by the average many, but by the
+extraordinary few; that one Mahommed, one Luther, one Bacon, one
+Napoleon, shall change the thoughts and habits of millions?--So that
+instead of saying that the history of mankind is the history of the
+masses, it would be much more true to say, that the history of mankind is
+the history of its great men; and that a true philosophy of history ought
+to declare the laws--call them physical, spiritual, biological, or what
+we choose--by which great minds have been produced into the world, as
+necessary results, each in his place and time.
+
+That would be a science indeed; how far we are as yet from any such, you
+know as well as I.  As yet, the appearance of great minds is as
+inexplicable to us as if they had dropped among us from another planet.
+Who will tell us why they have arisen when they did, and why they did
+what they did, and nothing else?  I do not deny that such a science is
+conceivable; because each mind, however great or strange, may be the
+result of fixed and unerring laws of life: and it is conceivable, too,
+that such a science may so perfectly explain the past, as to be able to
+predict the future; and tell men when a fresh genius is likely to arise
+and of what form his intellect will be.  Conceivable: but I fear only
+conceivable; if for no other reason, at least for this one.  We may grant
+safely that the mind of Luther was the necessary result of a combination
+of natural laws.  We may go further, and grant, but by no means safely,
+that Luther, was the creature of circumstances, that there was no self-
+moving originality in him, but that his age made him what he was.  To
+some modern minds these concessions remove all difficulty and mystery:
+but not, I trust, to our minds.  For does not the very puzzle de quo
+agitur remain equally real; namely, why the average of Augustine monks,
+the average of German men, did not, by being exposed to the same average
+circumstances as Luther, become what Luther was?  But whether we allow
+Luther to have been a person with an originally different character from
+all others, or whether we hold him to have been the mere puppet of
+outside influences, the first step towards discovering how he became what
+he was, will be to find out what he was.  It will be more easy, and, I am
+sorry to say, more common to settle beforehand our theory, and explain by
+it such parts of Luther as will fit it; and call those which will not fit
+it hard names.  History is often so taught, and the method is popular and
+lucrative.  But we here shall be of opinion, I am sure, that we only can
+learn causes through their effects; we can only learn the laws which
+produced Luther, by learning Luther himself; by analyzing his whole
+character; by gauging all his powers; and that--unless the less can
+comprehend the greater--we cannot do till we are more than Luther
+himself.  I repeat it.  None can comprehend a man, unless he be greater
+than that man.  He must be not merely equal to him, because none can see
+in another elements of character which he has not already seen in
+himself: he must be greater; because to comprehend him thoroughly, he
+must be able to judge the man's failings as well as his excellencies; to
+see not only why he did what he did, but why he did not do more: in a
+word, he must be nearer than his object is to the ideal man.
+
+And if it be assumed that I am quibbling on the words 'comprehend' and
+'greater,' that the observer need be greater only potentially, and not in
+act; that all the comprehension required of him, is to have in himself
+the germs of other men's faculties, without having developed those germs
+in life; I must still stand to my assertion.  For such a rejoinder
+ignores the most mysterious element of all character, which we call
+strength: by virtue of which, of two seemingly similar characters, while
+one does nothing, the other shall do great things; while in one the germs
+of intellect and virtue remain comparatively embryonic, passive, and
+weak, in the other these same germs shall develop into manhood, action,
+success.  And in what that same strength consists, not even the dramatic
+imagination of a Shakespeare could discover.  What are those
+heart-rending sonnets of his, but the confession that over and above all
+his powers he lacked one thing, and knew not what it was, or where to
+find it--and that was--to be strong?
+
+And yet he who will give us a science of great men, must begin by having
+a larger heart, a keener insight, a more varying human experience, than
+Shakespeare's own; while those who offer us a science of little men, and
+attempt to explain history and progress by laws drawn from the average of
+mankind, are utterly at sea the moment they come in contact with the very
+men whose actions make the history, to whose thought the progress is due.
+And why?  Because (so at least I think) the new science of little men can
+be no science at all: because the average man is not the normal man, and
+never yet has been; because the great man is rather the normal man, as
+approaching more nearly than his fellows to the true 'norma' and standard
+of a complete human character; and therefore to pass him by as a mere
+irregular sport of nature, an accidental giant with six fingers and six
+toes, and to turn to the mob for your theory of humanity, is (I think)
+about as wise as to ignore the Apollo and the Theseus, and to determine
+the proportions of the human figure from a crowd of dwarfs and cripples.
+
+No, let us not weary ourselves with narrow theories, with hasty
+inductions, which will, a century hence, furnish mere matter for a smile.
+Let us confine ourselves, at least in the present infantile state of the
+anthropologic sciences, to facts; to ascertaining honestly and patiently
+the thing which has been done; trusting that if we make ourselves masters
+of them, some rays of inductive light will be vouchsafed to us from Him
+who truly comprehends mankind, and knows what is in man, because He is
+the Son of Man; who has His own true theory of human progress, His own
+sound method of educating the human race, perfectly good, and perfectly
+wise, and at last, perfectly victorious; which nevertheless, were it
+revealed to us to-morrow, we could not understand; for if he who would
+comprehend Luther must be more than Luther, what must he be, who would
+comprehend God?
+
+Look again, as a result of the disturbing force of genius, at the effects
+of great inventions--how unexpected, complex, subtle, all but
+miraculous--throwing out alike the path of human history, and the
+calculations of the student.  If physical discoveries produced only
+physical or economic results--if the invention of printing had only
+produced more books, and more knowledge--if the invention of gunpowder
+had only caused more or less men to be killed--if the invention of the
+spinning-jenny had only produced more cotton-stuffs, more employment, and
+therefore more human beings,--then their effects would have been, however
+complex, more or less subjects of exact computation.
+
+But so strangely interwoven is the physical and spiritual history of man,
+that material inventions produce continually the most unexpected
+spiritual results.  Printing becomes a religious agent, causes not merely
+more books, but a Protestant Reformation; then again, through the Jesuit
+literature, helps to a Romanist counter-reformation; and by the clashing
+of the two, is one of the great causes of the Thirty Years' War, one of
+the most disastrous checks which European progress ever suffered.
+Gunpowder, again, not content with killing men, becomes unexpectedly a
+political agent; 'the villanous saltpetre,' as Ariosto and Shakespeare's
+fop complain, 'does to death many a goodly gentleman,' and enables the
+masses to cope, for the first time, with knights in armour; thus forming
+a most important agent in the rise of the middle classes; while the
+spinning-jenny, not content with furnishing facts for the political
+economist, and employment for millions, helps to extend slavery in the
+United States, and gives rise to moral and political questions, which may
+have, ere they be solved, the most painful consequences to one of the
+greatest nations on earth.
+
+So far removed is the sequence of human history from any thing which we
+can call irresistible or inevitable.  Did one dare to deal in epithets,
+crooked, wayward, mysterious, incalculable, would be those which would
+rather suggest themselves to a man looking steadily not at a few facts
+here and there, and not again at some hasty bird's-eye sketch, which he
+chooses to call a whole, but at the actual whole, fact by fact, step by
+step, and alas! failure by failure, and crime by crime.
+
+Understand me, I beg.  I do not wish (Heaven forbid!) to discourage
+inductive thought; I do not wish to undervalue exact science.  I only ask
+that the moral world, which is just as much the domain of inductive
+science as the physical one, be not ignored; that the tremendous
+difficulties of analyzing its phenomena be fairly faced; and the hope
+given up, at least for the present, of forming any exact science of
+history; and I wish to warn you off from the too common mistake of trying
+to explain the mysteries of the spiritual world by a few roughly defined
+physical laws (for too much of our modern thought does little more than
+that); and of ignoring as old fashioned, or even superstitious, those
+great moral laws of history, which are sanctioned by the experience of
+ages.
+
+Foremost among them stands a law which I must insist on, boldly and
+perpetually, if I wish (as I do wish) to follow in the footsteps of Sir
+James Stephen: a law which man has been trying in all ages, as now, to
+deny, or at least to ignore; though he might have seen it if he had
+willed, working steadily in all times and nations.  And that is--that as
+the fruit of righteousness is wealth and peace, strength and honour; the
+fruit of unrighteousness is poverty and anarchy, weakness and shame.  It
+is an ancient doctrine, and yet one ever young.  The Hebrew prophets
+preached it long ago, in words which are fulfilling themselves around us
+every day, and which no new discoveries of science will abrogate, because
+they express the great root-law, which disobeyed, science itself cannot
+get a hearing.
+
+For not upon mind, gentlemen, not upon mind, but upon morals, is human
+welfare founded.  The true subjective history of man is the history not
+of his thought, but of his conscience; the true objective history of man
+is not that of his inventions, but of his vices and his virtues.  So far
+from morals depending upon thought, thought, I believe, depends on
+morals.  In proportion as a nation is righteous,--in proportion as common
+justice is done between man and man, will thought grow rapidly, securely,
+triumphantly; will its discoveries be cheerfully accepted, and faithfully
+obeyed, to the welfare of the whole commonweal.  But where a nation is
+corrupt, that is, where the majority of individuals in it are bad, and
+justice is not done between man and man, there thought will wither, and
+science will be either crushed by frivolity and sensuality, or abused to
+the ends of tyranny, ambition, profligacy, till she herself perishes,
+amid the general ruin of all good things; as she had done in Greece, in
+Rome, in Spain, in China, and many other lands.  Laws of economy, of
+polity, of health, of all which makes human life endurable, may be
+ignored and trampled under foot, and are too often, every day, for the
+sake of present greed, of present passion; self-interest may become, and
+will become, more and more blinded, just in proportion as it is not
+enlightened by virtue; till a nation may arrive, though, thank God, but
+seldom, at that state of frantic recklessness which Salvian describes
+among his Roman countrymen in Gaul, when, while the Franks were
+thundering at their gates, and starved and half-burnt corpses lay about
+the unguarded streets, the remnant, like that in doomed Jerusalem of old,
+were drinking, dicing, ravishing, robbing the orphan and the widow,
+swindling the poor man out of his plot of ground, and sending meanwhile
+to the tottering Caesar at Rome, to ask, not for armies, but for
+Circensian games.
+
+We cannot see how science could have bettered those poor Gauls.  And we
+can conceive, surely, a nation falling into the same madness, and crying
+'Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,' in the midst of railroads,
+spinning-jennies, electric telegraphs, and crystal palaces, with infinite
+blue-books and scientific treatises ready to prove to them, what they
+knew perfectly well already, that they were making a very unprofitable
+investment, both of money and of time.
+
+For science indeed is great: but she is not the greatest.  She is an
+instrument, and not a power; beneficent or deadly, according as she is
+wielded by the hand of virtue or of vice.  But her lawful mistress, the
+only one which can use her aright, the only one under whom she can truly
+grow, and prosper, and prove her divine descent, is Virtue, the likeness
+of Almighty God.  This, indeed, the Hebrew Prophets, who knew no science
+in one sense of the word, do not expressly say: but it is a corollary
+from their doctrine, which we may discover for ourselves, if we will look
+at the nations round us now, if we will look at all the nations which
+have been.  Even Voltaire himself acknowledged that; and when he pointed
+to the Chinese as the most prosperous nation upon earth, ascribed their
+prosperity uniformly to their virtue.  We now know that he was wrong in
+fact: for we have discovered that Chinese civilization is one not of
+peace and plenty, but of anarchy and wretchedness.  But that fact only
+goes to corroborate the belief, which (strange juxtaposition!) was common
+to Voltaire and the old Hebrew Prophets at whom he scoffed, namely, that
+virtue is wealth, and vice is ruin.  For we have found that these
+Chinese, the ruling classes of them at least, are an especially
+unrighteous people; rotting upon the rotting remnants of the wisdom and
+virtue of their forefathers, which now live only on their lips in flowery
+maxims about justice and mercy and truth, as a cloak for practical
+hypocrisy and villany; and we have discovered also, as a patent fact,
+just what the Hebrew Prophets would have foretold us--that the miseries
+and horrors which are now destroying the Chinese Empire, are the direct
+and organic results of the moral profligacy of its inhabitants.
+
+I know no modern nation, moreover, which illustrates so forcibly as China
+the great historic law which the Hebrew Prophets proclaim; and that is
+this:--That as the prosperity of a nation is the correlative of their
+morals, so are their morals the correlative of their theology.  As a
+people behaves, so it thrives; as it believes, so it behaves.  Such as
+his Gods are, such will the man be; down to that lowest point which too
+many of the Chinese seem to have reached, where, having no Gods, he
+himself becomes no man; but (as I hear you see him at the Australian
+diggings) abhorred for his foul crimes even by the scum of Europe.
+
+I do not say that the theology always produces the morals, any more than
+that the morals always produce the theology.  Each is, I think,
+alternately cause and effect.  Men make the Gods in their own likeness;
+then they copy the likeness they have set up.  But whichever be cause,
+and whichever effect, the law, I believe, stands true, that on the two
+together depends the physical welfare of a people.  History gives us many
+examples, in which superstition, many again in which profligacy, have
+been the patent cause of a nation's deoradation.  It does not, as far as
+I am aware, give us a single case of a nation's thriving and developing
+when deeply infected with either of those two vices.
+
+These, the broad and simple laws of moral retribution, we may see in
+history; and (I hope) something more than them; something of a general
+method, something of an upward progress, though any thing but an
+irresistible or inevitable one.  For I have not argued that there is no
+order, no progress--God forbid.  Were there no order to be found, what
+could the student with a man's reason in him do, but in due time go
+mad?--Were there no progress, what could the student with a man's heart
+within him do, but in due time break his heart, over the sight of a chaos
+of folly and misery irredeemable?--I only argue that the order and the
+progress of human history cannot be similar to those which govern
+irrational beings, and cannot (without extreme danger) be described by
+metaphors (for they are nothing stronger) drawn from physical science.  If
+there be an order, a progress, they must be moral; fit for the guidance
+of moral beings; limited by the obedience which those moral beings pay to
+what they know.
+
+And such an order, such a progress as that, I have good hope that we
+shall find in history.
+
+We shall find, as I believe, in all the ages, God educating man;
+protecting him till he can go alone, furnishing him with the primary
+necessaries, teaching him, guiding him, inspiring him, as we should do to
+our children; bearing with him, and forgiving him too, again and again,
+as we should do: but teaching him withal (as we shall do if we be wise)
+in great part by his own experience, making him test for himself, even by
+failure and pain, the truth of the laws which have been given him;
+discover for himself, as much as possible, fresh laws, or fresh
+applications of laws; and exercising his will and faculties, by trusting
+him to himself wherever he can be trusted without his final destruction.
+This is my conception of history, especially of Modern History--of
+history since the Revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I express myself
+feebly enough, I know.  And even could I express what I mean perfectly,
+it would still be but a partial analogy, not to be pushed into details.
+As I said just now, were the true law of human progress revealed to us to-
+morrow, we could not understand it.
+
+For suppose that the theory were true, which Dr. Temple of Rugby has
+lately put into such noble words: suppose that, as he says, 'The power
+whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the past,
+transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life reaches from
+the creation to the day of judgment.  The successive generations of men,
+are days in this man's life.  The discoveries and inventions which
+characterize the different epochs of the world, are this man's works.  The
+creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages,
+are his thoughts.  The state of society at different times, are his
+manners.  He grows in knowledge, in self-control, in visible size, just
+as we do.'  Suppose all this; and suppose too, that God is educating this
+his colossal child, as we educate our own children; it will hardly follow
+from thence that his education would be, as Dr. Temple says it is,
+precisely similar to ours.
+
+Analogous it may be, but not precisely similar; and for this reason: That
+the collective man, in the theory, must be infinitely more complex in his
+organization than the individuals of which he is composed.  While between
+the educator of the one and of the other, there is simply the difference
+between a man and God.  How much more complex then must his education be!
+how all-inscrutable to human minds much in it!--often as inscrutable as
+would our training of our children seem to the bird brooding over her
+young ones in the nest.  The parental relations in all three cases may
+be--the Scriptures say that they are--expansions of the same great law;
+the key to all history may be contained in those great words--'How often
+would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathereth her chickens under
+her wings.'  Yet even there the analogy stops short--'but thou wouldest
+not' expresses a new element, which has no place in the training of the
+nestling by the dam, though it has place in our training of our children;
+even that self-will, that power of disobedience, which is the dark side
+of man's prerogative as a rational and self-cultivating being.  Here that
+analogy fails, as we should have expected it to do; and in a hundred
+other points it fails, or rather transcends so utterly its original type,
+that mankind seems, at moments, the mere puppet of those laws of natural
+selection, and competition of species, of which we have heard so much of
+late; and, to give a single instance, the seeming waste, of human
+thought, of human agony, of human power, seems but another instance of
+that inscrutable prodigality of nature, by which, of a thousand acorns
+dropping to the ground, but one shall become the thing it can become, and
+grow into a builder oak, the rest be craunched up by the nearest swine.
+
+Yet these dark passages of human life may be only necessary elements of
+the complex education of our race; and as much mercy under a fearful
+shape, as ours when we put the child we love under the surgeon's knife.
+At least we may believe so; believe that they have a moral end, though
+that end be unseen by us; and without any rash or narrow prying into
+final causes (a trick as fatal to historic research as Bacon said it was
+to science), we may justify God by faith, where we cannot justify Him by
+experience.
+
+Surely this will be the philosophic method.  If we seem to ourselves to
+have discovered a law, we do not throw it away the moment we find
+phaenomena which will not be explained by it.  We use those phaenomena to
+correct and to expand our law.  And this belief that History is 'God
+educating man,' is no mere hypothesis; it results from the observation of
+thousands of minds, throughout thousands of years.  It has long seemed--I
+trust it will seem still--the best explanation of the strange deeds of
+that strange being, man: and where we find in history facts which seem to
+contradict it, we shall not cast away rashly or angrily either it or
+them: but if we be Bacon's true disciples, we shall use them patiently
+and reverently to correct and expand our notions of the law itself, and
+rise thereby to more deep and just conceptions of education, of man,
+and--it may be--of God Himself.
+
+In proportion as we look at history thus; searching for effective, rather
+than final causes, and content to see God working everywhere, without
+impertinently demanding of Him a reason for His deeds, we shall study in
+a frame of mind equally removed from superstition on the one hand, and
+necessitarianism on the other.  We shall not be afraid to confess natural
+agencies: but neither shall we be afraid to confess those supernatural
+causes which underlie all existence, save God's alone.
+
+We shall talk of more than of an over-ruling Providence.  That such
+exists, will seem to us a patent fact.  But it will seem to us somewhat
+Manichaean to believe that the world is ill made, mankind a failure, and
+that all God has to do with them, is to set them right here and there,
+when they go intolerably wrong.  We shall believe not merely in an over-
+ruling Providence, but (if I may dare to coin a word) in an under-ruling
+one, which has fixed for mankind eternal laws of life, health, growth,
+both physical and spiritual; in an around-ruling Providence, likewise, by
+which circumstances, that which stands around a man, are perpetually
+arranged, it may be, are fore-ordained, so that each law shall have at
+least an opportunity of taking effect on the right person, in the right
+time and place; and in an in-ruling Providence. too, from whose
+inspiration comes all true thought, all right feeling; from whom, we must
+believe, man alone of all living things known to us inherits that
+mysterious faculty of perceiving the law beneath the phaenomena, by
+virtue of which he is a _man_.
+
+But we can hold all this, surely, and equally hold all which natural
+science may teach us.  Hold what natural science teaches?  We shall not
+dare not to hold it.  It will be sacred in our eyes.  All light which
+science, political, economic, physiological, or other, can throw upon the
+past, will be welcomed by us, as coming from the Author of all light.  To
+ignore it, even to receive it suspiciously and grudgingly, we shall feel
+to be a sin against Him.  We shall dread no 'inroads of materialism;'
+because we shall be standing upon that spiritual ground which
+underlies--ay, causes--the material.  All discoveries of science, whether
+political or economic, whether laws of health or laws of climate, will be
+accepted trustfully and cheerfully.  And when we meet with such startling
+speculations as those on the influence of climate, soil, scenery on
+national character, which have lately excited so much controversy, we
+shall welcome them at first sight, just because they give us hope of
+order where we had seen only disorder, law where we fancied chance: we
+shall verify them patiently; correct them if they need correction; and if
+proven, believe that they have worked, and still work, [Greek text], as
+factors in the great method of Him who has appointed to all nations their
+times, and the bounds of their habitation, if haply they might feel after
+Him, and find Him: though He be not far from any one of them; for in Him
+we live, and move, and have our being, and are the offspring of God
+Himself.
+
+I thus end what it seemed to me proper to say in this, my Inaugural
+Lecture; thanking you much for the patience with which you have heard me:
+and if I have in it too often spoken of myself, and my own opinions, I
+can only answer that it is a fault which has been forced on me by my
+position, and which will not occur again.  It seemed to me that some sort
+of statement of my belief was necessary, if only from respect to a
+University from which I have been long separated, and to return to which
+is to me a high honour and a deep pleasure; and I cannot but be aware (it
+is best to be honest) that there exists a prejudice against me in the
+minds of better men than I am, on account of certain early writings of
+mine.  That prejudice, I trust, with God's help, I shall be able to
+dissipate.  At least whatever I shall fail in doing, this University will
+find that I shall do one thing; and that is, obey the Apostolic precept,
+'Study to be quiet, and to do your own business.'
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{1}  Grimm, Grammatik, ii. p. 516.
+
+{2}  See Grimm, Grammatik, (2nd edit.) vol. i. p. 108; vol. ii. p. 581.
+
+{3}  Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. ii. p. 232.
+
+{4}  Forstemann mentions a Latin inscription of the third century found
+near Wiesbaden with the Dative Toutiorigi.
+
+{5}  German classics, by M. M. p. 12.
+
+{6}  Anonym.  Valesian. ad calcem Ann.  Marcellin. p. 722.  Gibbon, cap.
+xxxix; now known, through Mommsen, as the Annals of Ravenna.
+
+{7}  Grimm thinks that Charle-maigne and Charlemagne were originally
+corruptions of Karlo-man, and were interpreted later as Carolus magnus.
+Grimm, Grammatik, ii. 462; iii. 320.
+
+{8}  Weber, Lehrbuch der Weltgeschichte, section 245: 'Bei Verona von
+Theoderich (daher Dietrich von Bern) besiegt, barg sich Odoaker hinter
+die Mauern von Ravenna.'  It is much more objectionable when Simrock in
+his translation of the Edda renders Thjodrekr by Dietrich, though he
+retains Theodolf and similar names.  But it shows at the same time the
+wide popularity of that name.
+
+{9}  Grimm, Heldensage, p. 344.
+
+{10}  Gibbon, chap. xxxix. sub fin.
+
+{11}  Otto von Freising, in the first half of the twelfth century
+(Chronicon 5, 3), takes the opposite view, and thinks the fable derived
+from history: 'Ob ea non multis post diebus, xxx imperii sui anno,
+subitanea morte rapitur ac juxta beati Gregorii dialogum (4, 36) a Joanne
+et Symmacho in Aetnam praecipitatus, a quodam homine Dei cernitur.  Hinc
+puto fabulam illam traductam, qua vulgo dicitur: _Theodoricus vivus equo
+sedens ad inferos descendit_.
+
+{12}  Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, p. 36.  Chronicon Urspergense, 85a:
+Haec Jordanis quidam grammaticus, ex eorundem stirpe Gothorum progenitus,
+de Getarum origine et Amalorum nobilitate non omnia, quae de eis
+scribuntur et referuntur, ut ipse dicit, complexus exaravit, sed brevius
+pro rerum notitia huic opusculo inseruimus.  His perlectis diligenterque
+perspectis perpendat, qui discernere noverit, quomodo illud ratum
+teneatur, quod non solum _vulgarifabulatione_ et _cantilenarum
+modulatione_ usitatur, verum etiam in _quibusdam chronicis_ annotatur;
+scilicet quod _Hermenricus_ tempore Martiani principis super omnes Gothos
+regnaverit, et _Theodoricum Dietmari filium_, _patruelem_ suum, ut
+dicunt, _instimulante Odoacre_, item, ut ajunt, _patruele suo de Verona
+pulsum_, apud _Attilam Hunorum regem exulare coegerit_, cum
+historiographus narret, Ermenricum regem Gothorum multis regibus
+dominantem tempore Valentiniani et Valentis fratrum regnasse et a _duobus
+fratribus Saro_ et _Ammio_, quos conjicimus eos fuisse, qui _vulgariter
+Sarelo et Hamidiecus_ dicuntur, vulneratum in primordio egressionis
+Hunorum per Maeotidem paludem, quibus rex fuit Valamber, tam vulneris
+quam Hunorum irruptionis dolore defunctum fuisse, Attilam vero postea
+ultra LXX annos sub Martiano et Valentiniano cum Romanis et Wisigothis
+Aetioque duce Romanorum pugnasse et sub eisdem principibus regno vitaque
+decessisse. . . . Hinc rerum diligens inspector perpendat, quomodo
+_Ermenricus Theodoricum Dietmari filium apud Attilam exulare coegerit_,
+cum juxta hunc historiographum contemporalis ejus non fuit.  Igitur aut
+hic falsa conscripsit, aut _vulgaris opinio fallitur_ et _fallit_, aut
+alius Ermenricus et alms Theodoricus dandi sunt Attilae contemporanei, in
+quibus hujus modi rerum convenientia rata possit haberi.  Hic enim
+Ermenricus longe ante Attilam legitur defunctus.
+
+{13}  Chronicon, 5, 3: Quod autem rursum narrant, eum Hermanarico
+Attilaeque contemporaneum fuisse, omnino stare non potest, dum Attilam
+longe post Hermanaricum constat exercuisse tyrannidem istumque post
+mortem Attilae octennem a patre obsidem Leoni Augusto traditum.
+
+{14}  Chronicon, 16, 481: Quod autem quidam dicunt, ipsum Theodoricum
+fuisse Hermenrico Veronensi et Attilae contemporaneum, non est verum.
+Constat enim Attilam longe post Hermenricum fuisse Theodoricum etiam
+longe post mortem Attilae, quum esset puer octennis, Leoni imperatori in
+obsidem datum fuisse.
+
+{19}  The early romancers, and especially Achilles Tatius, give pictures
+of Roman praedial slavery too painful to quote.  Roman domestic slavery
+is not to be described by the pen of an Englishman.  And I must express
+my sorrow, that in the face of such notorious facts, some have of late
+tried to prove American slavery to be as bad as, or even worse than, that
+of Rome.  God forbid!  Whatsoever may have been the sins of the Southern
+gentleman, he is at least a Teuton, and not a Roman; a whole moral heaven
+above the effeminate wretch, who in the 4th and 5th centuries called
+himself a senator and a clarissimus.
+
+{101}  Dr. Sheppard, p. 297.
+
+{109}  Had he actually taken the name of Theodoric, Theuderic, Dietrich,
+which signifies much the same thing as 'King of nations'?
+
+{158}  With west-countrymen, to 'scrattle' still means to scramble, or
+shuffle about.
+
+{162}  English Language, vol. i. p. 200.
+
+{214}  Cf. Montalembert.  'Moines d'Occident.'
+
+{279}  Sismondi _Hist. de la Chute de l'Empire Romain_, p. 187.
+
+
+
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