Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2011 with funding from 
 The Library of Congress 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/romanteutonserie01king 
 
THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON 
 
 A SERIES OF LECTURES 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES KINGSLEY, M.A. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY. 
 
 ODamforitfge antr Hontron: 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 1864. 
 
 [The Right of Translation and Reproduction is reserved.~\ 
 
/ 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 TO 
 
 THE GENTLEMEN OP THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 WHO DID ME THE HONOUR 
 
 O 
 
 9y 
 
 TO ATTEND THESE LECTURES. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 INAUGURAL LECTURE .... ix 
 
 I. THE FOREST CHILDREN , . . . 1 
 
 II. THE DYING EMPIRE .... 18 
 
 PREFACE TO LECTURE III. . . .52 
 
 III. THE HUMAN DELUGE .... 64 
 
 IV. THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER . . . .108 
 V. DIETRICH'S END . . . . 134 
 
 VI. THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS . . .152 
 
 VII. PAULUS DIACONUS .... 171 
 
 VIII. THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN . .195 
 
 IX. THE MONK A CIVILIZER ... 231 
 
 X. THE LOMBARD LAWS . . . .271 
 
 XL THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS . . 296 
 
 XII. THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE . .324 
 
THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON. 
 
Cam&ttop: 
 
 PRIKTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS. 
 
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, ' do- 
 cendo 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 Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 I shall do that best, I believe, by keeping 
 in mind the lessons which I, in common with 
 
 h 
 
X THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 thousands more, have learnt from my wise and 
 good predecessor. I do not mean merely patience 
 in research, and accuracy in fact. They are re- 
 quired 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 con- 
 founding 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 un- 
 derstand, 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 ' Wis- 
 dom 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 ex- 
 plain 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 pas- 
 sions with himself; who will see with their eyes, 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XI 
 
 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 His- 
 tory 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 govern- 
 ed 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 there- 
 fore 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 great- 
 ness 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, how- 
 ever noble, the power which he exercises is the 
 
 62 
 
Xll THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 same in essence. He makes History, because he 
 understands men. And you, if you would under- 
 stand 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, autobio- 
 graphies; 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. Be- 
 lieve 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, ge- 
 nealogies, 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 can- 
 not think of the face in it, without recollecting 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. Xlll 
 
 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 there- 
 fore 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 con- 
 fess 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 under- 
 stand human beings, shall we understand the laws 
 
XIV THE LIMITS OE EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 phe- 
 nomena by physical, or at least economic laws. 
 There is an excuse for this last error. Much 
 which was thought, a few centuries since, to be- 
 long 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 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XV 
 
 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 com- 
 mon 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 out- 
 bursts, 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-sacri- 
 fice ; that he who denies, with Spinoza, the ex- 
 istence 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 there- 
 fore has no logical right either to praise virtue, 
 or to blame vice, can shew, by a healthy admira- 
 tion of the former, a healthy scorn of the latter, 
 how little his heart has been corrupted by the 
 
XVI THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 un- 
 philosophical 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; unphilosophi- 
 cal, because the only philosophical method of 
 looking at the strangest of phsenomena is to be- 
 lieve 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. 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XV11 
 
 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 X) 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 scien- 
 tific method, it need not be studied at all. 
 
 A very able anonymous writer has lately ex- 
 pressed 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 evolu- 
 tion 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 in- 
 ductive 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. 
 
XV111 THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 In the physical and the moral world, in the natu- 
 ral and the human, are ever seen two forces — 
 invariable rule, and continual advance; law and 
 action ; order and progress ; these two powers work- 
 ing harmoniously together, and the result, in- 
 evitable 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 So- 
 lar System. It is the crown of philosophy to see 
 immutable law even in the complex action of hu- 
 man 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 theo- 
 ries 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 definitively 
 admitted ; and something like a conception of one 
 grand analogy through the whole sphere of know- 
 ledge, has almost become a part of popular opinion. 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XIX 
 
 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 pe- 
 dants 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 man- 
 kind which nearly all men, more or less, acknow- 
 ledge, 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 
 
XX THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 to thank God for, that men should be more and 
 more expecting order, searching for order, welcom- 
 ing 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 dan- 
 gerous succedaneum of vague and grand epithets, 
 which very often contain, each of them, an assump- 
 tion 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, immuta- 
 ble, 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 argument between ne- 
 cessity and free-will ? "Whatever may be the rights 
 of that quarrel, they are certainly not to be as- 
 sumed in a passing epithet. But what else does 
 the writer do, who tells us that an inevitable se- 
 quence, an irresistible growth, exists in the moral 
 as well as in the physical world; and then says, 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXI 
 
 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 be- 
 lieve) 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 wonder- 
 ing 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 immu- 
 table laws as resulting in any inevitable sequence, 
 or irresistible growth. We shall not deny a se- 
 quence — Reason forbids that; or again, a growth 
 
XX11 THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 — Experience forbids that: but we shall be puz- 
 zled 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 1 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 per- 
 petual 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 stu- 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXlll 
 
 dents 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 na- 
 ture, 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 can- 
 not 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 ana- 
 logies 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 'ine- 
 vitable,' such nouns as ' order, sequence, law' 
 — which must bear an utterly different meaning, 
 
XXIV THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 according as they are applied to physical beings or 
 to moral ones. 
 
 Indeed, so patent is the ambiguity, that I can- 
 not 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 govern- 
 ing 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 
 j udgments 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 pow- 
 der 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 imagina- 
 tions, as long as we sit with a book in our studies : 
 but which vanishes the moment that we step out- 
 side into practical contact with life; and, instead 
 of talking cheerfully of a necessary and orderly 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXV 
 
 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 inter- 
 fering 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 
 
XXvi THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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, 
 aud 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 phsenomena under physical 
 laws, hastily assumed, by the old fallacy of ixera- 
 jSacrts ek a\\o yevos, 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 
 1 hypothesis.' Be that as it may, it is very con- 
 venient (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 phenomena 
 tolerably; and without it cannot explain them 
 at all. 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXV11 
 
 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 com- 
 menting ; for he confesses, honestly enough (and 
 he writes throughout like an honest man) that 
 in human life 'no rational thinker hopes to dis- 
 cover 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 phenomena, 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 dis- 
 turbances of anything like inevitable or irresistible 
 movement. Shall we not, at the very first glance, 
 confess — I am afraid only too soon — that there 
 
 c 2 
 
XXV111 THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 in- 
 evitable, 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 na- 
 tions 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 in- 
 crease of population, in a race which has had, 
 from the beginning, the abnormal and truly mon- 
 strous habit of slaughtering each other, not for 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. xxix 
 
 food — for in a race of normal cannibals, the ratio 
 of increase or decrease might easily be calcu- 
 lated — but uselessly, from rage, hate, fanaticism, 
 or even mere wantonness ? No man is less in- 
 clined 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 dis- 
 advantages, 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 
 
XXX THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 al- 
 ways decided by majorities: and granting that the 
 majority of men have common sense, are the mi- 
 nority of fools to count for nothing ? Are they 
 powerless ? Have they had no influence on His- 
 tory? 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 your- 
 selves. 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 develop- 
 ed ; 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 discre- 
 pancy between the amount of knowledge and the 
 
 5 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 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXXI 
 
 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 na- 
 ture what Gothe 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 iEtna, 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 aver- 
 age 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 
 
XXXU THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 for evil, surely human reason has been a disturb- 
 ing 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 re- 
 press, as long as seems good to them. 
 
 It is true, nature must be obeyed in order that 
 she may be conquered : but then she is to be con- 
 quered. 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 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXX111 
 
 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 discover- 
 ed, all teachers taught: by which all polities, king- 
 doms, civilizations, arts, manufactures, have esta- 
 blished 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 na- 
 tural 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 inter- 
 fere with my ideal, even with my personal com- 
 fort, 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 
 
XXXIV THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 Political Economy. It was too much inclined to 
 say to men : ' You are the puppets of certain na- 
 tural 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 Philosophic du 
 neant, philosophie de la misere, as it used to term 
 the laissez faire School, yet retained the worst fal- 
 lacy 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 denned 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 circum- 
 stances 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 circum- 
 stance. 
 
 I am not, surely, overstepping my province as 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXXV 
 
 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 great- 
 est living political economist has, in his Essay on 
 Liberty, put in a plea unequalled since the Areo- 
 pagitica 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 se- 
 quence or orderly progress of humanity. Some of 
 
XXXVI THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIEXCE 
 
 those writers, indeed, who are most anxious to dis- 
 cover an exact order, are most loud in their com- 
 plaints 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. Mean- 
 while, I must ask, if (as is said) most good legisla- 
 tion 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, re- 
 ligious, which should have been let alone, to de- 
 velop themselves in their own way, what becomes 
 of the inevitable laws, and the continuous pro- 
 gress, of the human mind? 
 
 Look again at the disturbing power, not mere- 
 ly 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 discover- 
 ing 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 pro- 
 ducing, from time to time, individuals immea- 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXXVll 
 
 surably superior to the average in some^point or 
 other, whom we call men of genius. Like Mr 
 Babbaofe'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 unex- 
 pected, 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 
 
/ 
 
 XXXV111 THE LIMITS OV EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 it be the very peculiarity of this fantastic and 
 altogether unique creature called man, not only 
 that he develops, from time to time, these excep- 
 tional 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 pro- 
 duced 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 in- 
 explicable 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 con- 
 ceivable, too, that such a science may so perfectly 
 explain the past, as to be able to predict the future ; 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. XXXIX 
 
 and tell men when a fresh genius is likely to arise 
 and of what form his intellect will be. Conceiv- 
 able : 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 aver- 
 age of Augustine monks, the average of German 
 men, did not, by being exposed to the same aver- 
 age 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 com- 
 mon 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 can only learn causes through their 
 
i 
 
 xl THE LIMITS OP EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 compre- 
 hend a nian, 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 l 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 in- 
 tellect and virtue remain comparatively embryotic, 
 passive, and weak, in the other these same germs 
 
AS- APPLIED TO HISTORY. xli 
 
 shall develop into manhood, action, success. And 
 in what that same strength consists, not even the 
 dramatic imagination of a Shakespeare could dis- 
 cover. 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— rto 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 oifer 
 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. 
 
 d 
 
xlii THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 
 V 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 compre- 
 hend 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 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. xliii 
 
 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 inven- 
 tions 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 Pomanist 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 spin- 
 ning-jenny, not content with furnishing facts for 
 the political economist, and employment for mil- 
 lions, 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. 
 
 d 2 
 
 y 
 
xliv THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 So far removed is the sequence of human his- 
 tory 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 phsenomena be fairly faced ; and the 
 hope given up, at least for the present, of forming 
 J 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 denned physical laws (for too much 
 of our modern thought does little more than that) ; 
 and of ignoring as old fashioned, or even super- 
 stitious, 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 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. xlv 
 
 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 un- 
 righteousness 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 can- 
 not get a hearing. 
 
 For not upon mind, gentlemen, not upon 
 mind, but upon morals, is human welfare found- ^ 
 ed. 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 pro- 
 portion 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 faith- 
 fully obeyed, to the welfare of the whole common- 
 weal. 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 
 
xlvi THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 either crashed 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 has 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 ma} 7 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 Jeru- 
 salem of old, were drinking, dicing, ravishing, rob- 
 bing the orphan and the widow, swindling the 
 poor man out of his plot of ground, and sending 
 meanwhile to the tottering Csesar 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 cry- 
 ing, ' 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 treaties ready to prove to 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. xlvii 
 
 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 sci- 
 ence 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 Vol- 
 taire himself acknowledged that ; and when he 
 pointed to the Chinese as the most prosperous 
 nation upon earth, ascribed their prosperity uni- 
 formly 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 
 
Xlviil THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 prac- 
 tical hypocrisy and villany; and we have disco- 
 vered also, as a patent fact, just what the Hebrew 
 Prophets would have foretold us — that the mise- 
 ries and horrors which are now destroying the 
 Chinese Empire, are the direct and organic re- 
 sults 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 pro- 
 duces 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 like- 
 ness they have set up. But whichever be cause, 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. xlix 
 
 and whichever effect, the law, I believe, stands true, 
 that on the two together depends the physical wel- 
 fare of a people. History gives us many examples, 
 in which superstition, many again in which pro- 
 fligacy, have been the patent cause of a nation's 
 degradation. 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 re- 
 tribution, we may see in history; and (I hope) 
 something more than them; something of a gene- 
 ral 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 y 
 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 thev know. 
 
1 THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 ; hearing 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 ; dis- 
 cover for himself, as much as possible, fresh laws, 
 or fresh applications of laws; and exercising his 
 will and faculties, by trusting him to himself wher- 
 ever he can be trusted without his final destruction. 
 This is my conception of history, especially of Mo- 
 dern History — of history since the Revelation of 
 our Lord Jesus Christ. I express myself feebly 
 enough, I know. And even could I express what 
 1 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 under- 
 stand 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 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. 11 
 
 a colossal man, whose life reaches from the creation y 
 to the day of judgment. The successive genera- 
 tions 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 princi- 
 ples 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 be- 
 tween 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 w T ords — ' How often would 
 I have gathered thy children as a hen gathereth 
 
Hi THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred 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 be- 
 come, 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 be- 
 lieve 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), 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. liii 
 
 we may justify God by faith, where we cannot jus- 
 tify 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 pheno- 
 mena which will not be explained by it. We use 
 those phenomena to correct and to expand our 
 law. And this belief that History is i God edu- i^' 
 eating 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 con- 
 tradict it, we shall not cast away rashly or angrily 
 either it or them : but if we be Bacon's true disci- 
 ples, 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 rea- 
 son 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 
 
liv THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE 
 
 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 some- 
 what Manichsean 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 Provi- 
 dence, 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 feel- 
 ing ; from whom, we must believe, man alone 
 of all living things known to us inherits that 
 mysterious faculty of perceiving the law beneath 
 the phenomena, 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, 
 
AS APPLIED TO HISTORY. lv 
 
 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 under- 
 lies — 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 influ- 
 ence 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, ovk avev Qeou, 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 
 
lvi THE LIMITS OF EXACT SCIENCE, &C. 
 
 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 po- 
 sition, 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, 
 1 Study to be quiet, and to do your own business.' 
 
 I have now to announce, that my lectures will 
 commence the first week in next February, and be 
 spread over the Lent and Easter terms; and that, 
 meanwhile, if any Undergraduates wish to become 
 members of my Class, I shall be most happy to 
 see them at my own house, on Mondays, Wednes- 
 days, or Fridays, at the hour of twelve, and tell 
 them what books it seems to me they ought to 
 read: always premising, that Gibbon, whether I 
 may agree or disagree with him in details, will 
 form the text-book on which they will be ex- 
 amined by me. 
 
LECTURE I. 
 
 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 I wish in this first lecture to give you some ge- 
 neral conception of the causes which urged our Teu- 
 tonic 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. 
 1' 1 
 
2 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 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 ad- 
 venturous 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 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 3 
 
 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 com- 
 rades 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 with- 
 in; till the boys grow to be youths, and the 
 
 1—2 
 
4 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 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 Lapithse, 
 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 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 5 
 
 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 neigh- 
 bour'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 
 
6 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 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 meta- 
 phor. 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 under- 
 stand 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 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 7 
 
 human being, most affectionate, susceptible, even 
 sentimental and superstitious ; fond of gambling, 
 brute excitement, childish amusements in the in- 
 tervals 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 hun- 
 dred 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 them- * 
 selves 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 
 
8 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 their despairing boast of the Roman numbers, an- 
 swered, "Come out to us then, the thicker the 
 
 V 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 suffer- 
 ing 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 
 
 v Vandals had also — of being the most pure ; Cas- 
 titate venerandi. And among 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 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 9 
 
 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 acquaint- 
 ance 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 con- 
 stitution; that the Teuton creed concerning the w 
 unseen world, and divine beings, was of a loftiness 
 and purity as far above the silly legends of 
 
10 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 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 capabili- 
 ties 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 lie 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 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 11 
 
 have done it then, if physical power and courage 
 were all that was needed, in the days of the All- 
 man war. They could have done it a few years 
 before, when the Markmen fought Marcus Aure- 
 lius 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 pri- 
 soners, 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 adven- 
 turous 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 dis- 
 cipline 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 Yitellius 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 
 
12 The forest children. 
 
 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 
 
 j/ 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, Home 
 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 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 13 
 
 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 hun- 
 dred 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 
 
14 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 of the knowledge of good and evil, and were driven 
 out of the paradise of unconsciousness ; they 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; per- 
 haps 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 
 ail, 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 eth- 
 nology, 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 
 J a child who steals apples, and makes himself sick 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 15 
 
 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 battle- 
 field can shew ; and first among them, surely, is 
 the disappointment of young hopes, the degrada-j/ 
 tion 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 
 
16 THE FOREST CHILDREN. 
 
 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 tri- 
 umph 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 ex- 
 presses, I believe, the key-note of the old Teuton's 
 heart, after his work was done. Siegfried murder- 
 ed 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, herself 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 Borne, 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 
 
THE FOREST CHILDREN. 17 
 
 nomine fabula narratur. Even so they went on, 
 killing, till none were left. Deeds as strange, horri- 
 ble, 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 vir- 
 tue 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 condi- 
 V tion 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 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 19 
 
 all envied, nattered, 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 Gold win Smith well says, "the 
 earth swarmed with the consuming hierarchy of * 
 extortion, so that it was said that they who re- 
 ceived 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 govern- 
 ment 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 Afri- 
 can 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; v 
 the ' servorum nationes' were the only tillers of 
 the soil, of those 'latifundia' or great estates, 
 i quae perdidere Eomam.' Denied the rights of 
 
20 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 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 effe- 
 minate, 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 Koman 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 1 . 
 
 1 The early romancers, and especially Achilles Tatius, give pic- 
 tures of Roman preedial slavery too painful to quote. Roman domes- 
 tic 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. 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 21 
 
 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 1 One of complete disor- 
 ganization. The only uniting bond left seems to 
 have been that of the bureaucracy, the commu- 
 nity 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 inertise, 
 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 con- 
 dition of the empire was one of revolt, civil war, 
 invasion — Pretenders, like Carausius and Allec- 
 tus in Britain, setting themselves up as emperors 
 for awhile — Bands of brigands, like the Bagaudae 
 of Gaul, and the Circumcelliones of Africa, wan- 
 dering ab'out, 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 
 
22 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 the tribes behind them, and perish by their bre- 
 thren'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 mise- 
 ry 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-mor- 
 row we die." 
 
 The state of things at Home, and after the 
 rise of Byzantium under Constantine at Byzan- 
 tium likewise, was one altogether fantastic, abnor- 
 mal, 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 DYING EMPIRE. 23 
 
 the notion, 1 should strongly recommend to read 
 the answer of Professor G. Smith, in the Oxford 
 Essays for 1856, which is as complete and crush- 
 ing 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 govern- 
 ment 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 our- 
 selves 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 expres- 
 sions of the national will, are no longer in exist- 
 ence. 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 num- 
 ber of the richest old gentlemen in London meet 
 daily at Westminster to receive orders from Buck- 
 ingham 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 dag- 
 ger 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 Knights- 
 
24 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 bridge, have sold the throne to Baron Rothschild, 
 for a handsome donation of £25 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 metro- 
 polis by stopping the imports of ' bread-stuffs' 
 at the mouth of the Thames. And this has be- 
 come 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 Lon- 
 don; the sturdy labourers of Dorsetshire and the 
 eastern counties ; and the skilful artizans of Man- 
 chester, 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 popu- 
 lation, or rather the miserable relics of them, dis- 
 dain all manual employment : they divide their 
 time between starvation and a degrading debauch- 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 25 
 
 ery, the means for which are sedulously provided 
 by the government. The time-honoured institu- 
 tions of the bull-bait, the cock-pit, and the ring, 
 are in daily operation, under the most distinguish- 
 ed patronage. Hyde Park has been converted 
 into a gigantic arena, where criminals from New- 
 gate ' set-to' with the animals from the Zoolo- 
 gical 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 artistes 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 appre- 
 hension that the slaves may rise, and make a clean 
 sweep of the metropolis with fire and steel. But 
 nimjporte — 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 
 
26 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 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 he in the Tower under 
 sentence of death; Lord Brougham, the Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, and Mr Gladstone, opened 
 their veins and died in a warm bath last week. 
 Foreign relations 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 pro- 
 voked. 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 impo- 
 tent 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 victori- 
 ous legions which have fought and conquered in 
 all regions of the world. The men of Waterloo 
 and Inkermann are no more. We are compelled 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 27 
 
 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 ac- 
 tual, state of things. "We think this disposes of 
 the theory of Mr Congreve. "With it may ad- 
 vantageously 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 per- 
 sonal experience V 
 
 Mr Sheppard should have added, to make 
 the picture complete, that the Irish have just es- 
 tablished popery across St George's Channel, by 
 the aid of re-immigrants from America ; that Free 
 Kirk and National Kirk are carrying on a san- 
 guinary civil war in Scotland; that the Devon- 
 shire Wesley an s have just sacked Exeter cathe- 
 
28 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 dral, 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 Bothschild) 
 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 mas- 
 ters who had freed them, or disguising their bar- 
 barian 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 DYING EMPIRE. 29 
 
 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 match- 
 lock, but with Enfield rifle and Whitworth can- 
 non. 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 apo- 
 state 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 cen- 
 
30 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 tury. 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 ex- 
 aggerated who knows the Roman history of his 
 faithful servant and soldier, Ammianus Marcel- 
 linus, and especially the later books of it, in which 
 he sets forth the state of the Empire after Ju- 
 lian's death, under Jovian, Procopius, Yalentinian, 
 (who kept close to his bedchamber 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 ser- 
 vices — a brutal tyrant, whose only virtue seems 
 to have been his chastity) ; and Valens, the shame- 
 less 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 ex- 
 aggerated 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. 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 31 
 
 Salvian was a Christian gentleman, born some- 
 where near Treves. He married a Pagan lady 
 of Cologne, converted her, had by her a daughter, 
 and then persuaded her to devote herself to celi- 
 bacy, 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 
 
32 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 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 prac- 
 tically immoral doctrines than that of the dignity 
 of celibacy and the defilement of marriage, (which 
 was the doctrine of all Christian devotees for iooo 
 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 iooo 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 
 
TPIE DYING EMPIRE. 33 
 
 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 morn- 
 ning 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 
 
 3 
 
34 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 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, de- 
 served, fairly earned (for that is the true meaning 
 of those words), and therefore must come. Con- 
 ceive him seeing around him estates destroyed, 
 farms burnt, ladies and gentlemen, his own friends 
 and relations, reduced in an hour to beggary, 
 plundered, strip t, 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 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 35 
 
 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 in- 
 creased 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 seem- 
 ingly 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 
 
 3—2 
 
36 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 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 con- 
 vents 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 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 37 
 
 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 blas- 
 pheming, 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, 
 
38 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 and not the Goths, have been your true con- 
 querors.' As I said in nay 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 ever- 
 lasting judgments of God ; and teach them that 
 not faulty constitutions, faulty laws, faulty cir- 
 cumstances 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 His- 
 tory 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 Claris- 
 simi 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 responsi- 
 bilities 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 func- 
 tionaries and soldiers ; and gave them the power of 
 appointing magistrates, who were only after all the 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 39 
 
 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 d}dng of. Salvian says, that it was 
 dying of vice. Not of bad laws and class arrange- 
 ments, but of bad men. M. Guizot belongs to a 
 school which is apt to impute human happiness and 
 prosperity too exclusively to the political constitu- 
 tion under which they may happen to live irre- 
 spectively of the morality of the people them- 
 selves. From that, the constitutionalist school, 
 there has been of late a strong reaction, the high- 
 est exponent, nay the very coryphseus 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 pro- 
 
40 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 duce 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 de- 
 gradation, from the premier to the slave. Russia 
 j 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 im- 
 portant, 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 Boman 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 Boman laws were. 
 If they had not been such, how was the Boman 
 Empire, at least in its first years, a blessing to the 
 safety, prosperity, and wealth. of every country it 
 enslaved ? But when defective Boman laws began 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 41 
 
 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 Ro- 
 man decay. He, an eye-witness, imputes it all to 
 the morals of Roman citizens. They were, ac- 
 cording to him, of the very worst. To the general 
 dissoluteness he attributes, in plain words, the suc- 
 cess 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 
 Chistianity is not present in its purest and strong- 
 est 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 indul- 
 
42 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 gence of the passions must produce, and does pro- 
 duce, 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 bea- 
 con 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, gentle- 
 men. For national life is grounded on, is the de- 
 velopment 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, 1 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 ! 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 43 
 
 No wonder, therefore, if Salvian's accounts of 
 Gaulish profligacy be true, that Gaulish reckless- 
 ness 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 
 
44 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 just now ; that if a bad people earn bad govern- 
 ment, 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 con- 
 sciously 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 panto- 
 mimes. 
 
 In one respect, indeed, these government 
 spectacles became worse, not better, under Chris- 
 tianity. They were less cruel, no doubt : but also 
 they were less beautiful. The old custom of ex- 
 hibiting 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 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 45 
 
 vulgar kind. We know in detail the abomina- 
 tions, as shameless and ridiculous, which went 
 on a century after Salvian, in the theatres of 
 Constantinople, under the eyes of the most Chris- 
 tian Emperor Justinian, and which won for that 
 most infamous woman, Theodora, a share in his im- 
 perial 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 com- 
 plaints 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 judgement of God, that they 
 wjio do such things are worthy of death, not only do 
 the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. ' 
 
46 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 Now in contrast to all these abominations, 
 old Salvian sets, boldly and honestly, the supe- 
 rior morality of the barbarians. That, he says, 
 is the cause of their strength and our weakness. 
 We, professing orthodoxy, are profligate hypo- 
 crites. They, half heathens, half Arians, are ho- 
 nester 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 Gepidse 
 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, bat hospitable ; the Saxons ferociously 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 47 
 
 cruel, but venerable for their chastity. The Visi- 
 goths 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 Homans ; 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. 
 
48 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 The causes of the Arian hatred to the Catholics 
 v/ 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 immo- 
 rality. That may account for the Vandal custom 
 of re-baptizing the Catholics. It certainly ac- 
 counts 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 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 49 
 
 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 com- 
 fort 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 V 
 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 wor- 
 shipped upon her boy's grave to her dying day. 
 
 Yes. God had his own left, even among those 
 fallen Africans of Carthage. 
 
 4 
 
50 THE DYING EMPIRE. 
 
 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 Ve- 
 nus, 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 
 
THE DYING EMPIRE. 51 
 
 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. 
 
 4 — 2 
 
PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 
 
 On Dr Lathams ' Ger mania? 
 
 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 pro- 
 bably 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 Getse 
 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 Lithu- 
 anians by their Sclavonic neighbours. I merely 
 
PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 53 
 
 state the theory, and leave it for the judgment 
 of others. 
 
 The principal points which Dr Latham con- 
 siders 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 in- 
 fluenced 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 Ro- 
 mans of the Republic ; so were the Spaniards of 
 America ; so, probably, were the Aztecs and Incas 
 whom they overthrew; and surely our own con- 
 querors and re-conquerors 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 abori- 
 ginal Germans, but Sclavonians Germanized, and 
 under German leaders. It may be so. The cus- 
 tom of enslaving captives would render pure Teu- 
 tonic blood among the lower classes of a tribe the 
 exception and not the rule; while the custom of 
 chiefs choosing the ' thegns,' ' gesitha,' or f comites,' 
 who lived and died as their companions-in-arms, 
 
54 PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 
 
 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 re- 
 spect 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 high- 
 est. 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, wea- 
 pons, 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 bonds- 
 man believed him ; and became his lord's man, and 
 
PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 55 
 
 followed him to the death ; and was thereby not 
 degraded, but raised out of. selfish savagery and 
 Jbrute 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 iden- 
 tical 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 ra- 
 pidity'? 
 
 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 : 
 
56 PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 
 
 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 Lom- 
 bards — 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 dis- 
 possest the Teutons by force ? And is not this 
 assumption his ground for objecting that the move- 
 ment 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 ' un- 
 represented in any tradition'? Do not the tradi- 
 tions of Jornandes and Paulus Diaconus, that the 
 Goths and the Lombards came from Scandina- 
 via, 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 around them are 
 
PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 57 
 
 spent, are found to contain the very pith of the 
 matter. 
 
 Are the ' phenomena of replacement and sub- 
 stitution' 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, f 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 east- 
 ward ; 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 
 
58 PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 
 
 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 ques- 
 tion of all. What put these Germanic peoples on 
 going South ? Were there no causes sufficient to 
 excite so desperate a resolve ? 
 
 (i) 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 Eng- 
 land, North Germany, and the Baltic, the descend- 
 ants, 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 ob- 
 jections are raised to this, I ask (but in all humi- 
 lity), Did not these southward migrations com- 
 mence 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 
 
PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 59 
 
 the dialects did not alter during the long journey- 
 ings 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 Mseso- 
 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 Cru- 
 saders, 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 
 
60 PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 
 
 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 there- 
 fore 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 Boruans, 
 there was a similar discovery of the Bomans 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 
 
PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 61 
 
 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's 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 primeval 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 
 
62 PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 
 
 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 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, es- 
 caped by miracle from the butcheries of the amphi- 
 theatre, 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 i 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 in- 
 toxicating influence, as of a place omnipotent, super- 
 human, 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 super- 
 human in their eyes as Rome itself would have 
 
PREFACE TO LECTURE III. 63 
 
 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. 
 
y 
 
 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 lec- 
 ture. 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 1 It 
 is all a horrible ' fourmillement des nations/ like 
 the working of an ant-heap; like the insects de- 
 vouring each other in a drop of water. Teuton 
 tribes, Sclavonic tribes, Tartar tribes, Roman 
 generals, empresses, bishops, courtiers, adventur- 
 ers, appear for a moment out of the crowd, dim 
 phantoms — nothing more, most of them — with a 
 name appended, and then vanish, proving their 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 65 
 
 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 to- 
 ward 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 oil ; 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. 
 
 5 
 
66 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 Himself a Goth, lie 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 pane- 
 gyrist 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, espe- 
 cially as to South France and North Italy; while 
 many particulars of the first sack of Rome, with 
 comments thereon which express the highest in- 
 tellects 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 67 
 
 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, sym- 
 bol 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, BAcimers and As- 
 pars, 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 tor- 
 ment. 
 
 You may see, as St John warns you, that — 
 after her fall, mind — if men would go on wor- 
 shipping the beast, and much more his image — 
 the phantom and shadow of brute force, after the 
 
 5 — 2 
 
68 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 ad- 
 venturers, 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 ihe midst of it, whose 
 leaves should be for the healing of the nations. 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 69 
 
 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 histo- 
 rians than myself the general subject of the Teutonic 
 immigrations ; the conquest of North Gaul by the 
 Franks, of Britain by the Faxons 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 in- 
 teresting 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, Getse, Juts, antiquarians find them 
 in early and altogether mythic times, in the Scan- 
 dinavian 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, sig- 
 nifies 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. 
 
70 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 Gepidge, a Ger- 
 man 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 de- 
 vices 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 prin- 
 cipally by slaves, usually captives taken in war: 
 but the noble mystery of the forge, where arms 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 71 
 
 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' Transla- 
 tion of the Scriptures. For these Goths, the great- 
 er 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 coun- 
 trymen 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 con- 
 sidered) 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 alder- 
 man, of the Thervrings, 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 — 
 
72 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 de- 
 rived all the old royal families of Europe, that 
 of the House of Brunswick among the rest. 
 
 That they were no savages, is shewn suffi- 
 ciently 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 per- 
 sonal 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 Boman frontier 
 more than once, and taken cities. They had com- 
 pelled 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 Emperor Decius, till lie, and many of his legion- 
 aries, 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 
 'Teufel-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, Er- 
 manaric, ' the powerful warrior,' comparable, says 
 Jornandes, to Alexander himself, who had con- 
 quered all the conquered tribes around. When 
 he was past 100 years old, a chief of the Roxolani 
 (Ugrians, according to Dr Latham ; men of Eos, 
 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 Erma- 
 naric 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 
 
74 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 on the steppes ; pig-eyed hideous beings, with 
 cakes instead of faces, ' offam niagis qaam faciem,' 
 under ratskin caps, armed with arrows tipped with 
 bone, and lassos of cord, eating, marketing, sleep- 
 ing 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 in heavy cuirasses of plait- 
 ed 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 Home. 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 Salens 
 the Emperor. Valens, low-born, cruel, and covet- 
 ous, was an Arian, and could not lose the oppor- 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 75 
 
 tunity of making converts. He sent theologians 
 to meet Ulfilas, and torment him into Arianism. 
 When he arrived, Yalens 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 Arian- 
 ism became the creed, not only of the Goths, but 
 of the Yandals, 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 ' metaphy- 
 sical 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 Nicsean Creed was as yet 
 received by only half of the Empire ; and while 
 he meanwhile had been toiling for years in the 
 
76 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 Danubian wilds, ignorant perhaps of the contro- 
 versy which had meanwhile convulsed theChurch) — 
 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 Catho- 
 lic Faith, denied the abysmal unity of the God- 
 head; 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, Ul- 
 filas never heard) asked the fine ladies of Alex- 
 andria — 'Had you a son before that son was 
 born 1 ' — ' 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 Wo- 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 77 
 
 den, 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 Ortho- 
 doxy I have said enough to shew you that I think 
 it an internecine battle between truth and false- 
 hood. 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 sequoris idem 
 Discere quam multse 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 hap- 
 pened, 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 
 
78 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 car- 
 pets, 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 re- 
 fused supplies from the market, and came to 
 blows with the guards. Lupicinus, half drunk, 
 heard of it, and gave orders for a massacre. Fridi- 
 gern 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 79 
 
 armed themselves with the weapons of the dead. 
 Moesia was overrun with fire and sword. Adriano- 
 ple 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 grow- 
 ing 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 Taifalse (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 mono- 
 mania 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 
 
80 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 Constan- 
 tinople ; and he undervalued the Goths, on account 
 of some successes of his lieutenants, who had reco- 
 vered much of the plunder taken by them, and had 
 utterly overpowered the foul Taifalse, transporting 
 them to lands about Modena and Parma in Italy. 
 He rejected Count Bicimer'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 cot- 
 tage. The Goths set it on fire, and burned him 
 and his staff therein, ignorant that they had in 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 81 
 
 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 Yalens 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 Cannse, the death- 
 wound of Rome. From that day the end was cer- 
 tain, 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 Csesar, the man- god by whose 
 head all nations swore, rich with the magic wealth, 
 wise with the magic cunning, of centuries of super- 
 human 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 ? 
 
 6 
 
82 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 Csesars was enough of 
 itself to keep that idea alive. So far from ex- 
 pelling 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 83 
 
 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. I 
 
 Theodosius has received the surname of Great 
 — seemingly by comparison ; " Inter csecos 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 gen- 
 tleman, 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, cor- 
 rupt, reckless; that the soldiers (if Vegetius is 
 to be believed) actually laid aside, by royal per- 
 mission, 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 Eu- 
 rope till the English yeoman, at Crecy and Poic- 
 tiers, 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 
 
 6—2 
 
84 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 tores and bracelets ; or 
 even (as in the case of Fravitta and Priulf ) stabbed 
 his enemy with impunity at the imperial table ; 
 that Kiveiv to ^kvQikov, 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 ex- 
 cited nothing more than grumblings of impotent 
 jealousy from a people whose maxim had be- 
 come, "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 quarrelling among them- 
 selves, 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 85 
 
 not considered derogatory to the ' greatness' of 
 Theodosius. 
 
 The old Athanaric, the Thervring — 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 him- 
 self 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 had 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 goodnatured 
 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 Both- 
 
86 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 eric (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 cla- 
 moured, 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 Kivelv to *2kv9ikov ; and Theo- 
 dosius, partly in honest indignation, partly per- 
 haps 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 87 
 
 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 ortho- 
 dox, the murderers barbarians and Arians ; St 
 Ambrose, with a noble courage, stopped the 
 Emperor at the door of the Basilica of Milan, 
 and forbad hirn to enter, till he had atoned for 
 the fatal order by public penance. The Csesar sub- 
 mitted nobly to the noble demand; and the re- 
 pentance of Theodosius is the last scene in the 
 downward career of the Csesars, 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 worth- 
 less 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 hypo- 
 crisy 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. 
 
88 • THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 In January 395 I said, Theodosius died. Be- 
 fore 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 pay- 
 ment of their usual subsidy. He had been re- 
 fused 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 enjoy- 
 ed a Greek bath and a public banquet, and tried 
 to behave for a day like a Boman gentleman); 
 sacking Corinth, Argos, Sparta, and all the cities 
 and villages far and wide, and carrying off plun- 
 der 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-manceuvred him, crost the Gulf 
 of Corinth at Bhiuni, with all his plunder and cap- 
 tives, 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 com- 
 ing 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 HUMAN DELUGE. 89 
 
 the Adriatic, poised like an eagle in mid-air, watch- 
 ing 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 Italise raptis 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 tied to Asta, and Alaric be- 
 sieged him there. The faithful Stilicho came to 
 the rescue; ,and Alaric was driven to extremi- 
 ties. His warriors counselled him to retreat. 
 No, he would take Rome, or die. But at Pol- 
 lentia, 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 
 
90 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 Sti- 
 licho 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, 
 sgepe victo, ssepe 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. X 
 
 Alaric rose instantly, and with him all the 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 91. 
 
 Gothic tribes. Down through Italy he past, al- 
 most 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 buf- 
 falo;' 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 
 300olbs. 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 
 
92 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 re- 
 fused 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 in- 
 sane 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, 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 93 
 
 probably by German slaves within ; and then, for 
 five dreadful days and nights, the wicked city ex- ^ 
 piated in agony the sins of centuries. 
 
 And so at last the Nibelungen hoard was won. 
 
 ' And the kings of the earth who had lived deli- 
 cately 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 ; per- 
 haps 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. Bead it, gentlemen 
 — especially you who are to be priests — not merely 
 
94 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 misfht know 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 95 
 
 where Alaric lies : and no man does know till this 
 
 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; Pla- 
 cidia 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, indescri- 
 bable ; 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, 
 
96 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 gentlemen, of the treasures of Rome ? Jewels, re- 
 collect, are all but indestructible ; recollect, too, 
 that vast quantities were buried from time to time, 
 and their places forgotten. Perhaps future gene- 
 rations will discover many such hoards. Mean- 
 while, 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 per- 
 manence 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 97 
 
 may call tliem) like Aetius and Boniface, the real 
 rulers of a nominal Empire. 
 
 Puppet Valentinian succeeded his father, pup- 
 pet Honorius. In his days appeared another great 
 portent — another comet, sweeping down out of in- 
 finite space, and back into infinite space again. — 
 Attila and his Huns. They lay in innumerable 
 hordes upon the Danube, until Honoria, Valenti- 
 nian's sister, confined in a convent at Constantino- 
 ple for some profligacy, sent her ring to Attila. He 
 must be her champion, and deliver her. He paused 
 awhile, like Alaric before him, doubting whether 
 to dash on Constantinople or Rome, and at last 
 decided for Home. 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 Boman and West Goth, Frank and Bur- 
 gund, and the Bretons of Armorica. Wicked Ae- 
 tius shewed himself that day, as always, a general 
 and a hero — the Marlborough of his time — and 
 conquered. Attila and his hordes rolled away east- 
 ward, and into Italy for Borne. 
 
 That is the Hunnenschlacht ; ' a battle,' as 
 Jornandes calls it, 'atrox, multiplex, immane, per- 
 tinax.' Antiquity, he says, tells of nothing like 
 
 7 
 
98 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 le- 
 gends which still hang about the place. You may 
 see one of them in Von Kaulbach's immortal de- 
 sign — 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 3 T ear 
 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 
 know T s 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 wmispered 
 among themselves, that like a free-born Teuton, 
 she had slain her tyrant. One longs to know 
 what became of her. 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 99 
 
 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 Cha- 
 lons, to my mind, was the saving battle of Europe. 
 
 So Rome was saved ; but only for a few years. 
 Puppet Yalentinian 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. Neg- 
 lecting his own w T ife 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 Em- 
 peror. She sent across the seas to Afric, to 
 Genseric the Vandal, the cruel tyrant and per- 
 secutor. He must come and be her champion, as 
 Attila had been Honoria's. And he came, with 
 Vandals, Moors, naked Ausurians from the Atlas. 
 
100 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 The wretched Bornans, in their terror, tore Maxi- 
 mum 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 
 Home 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 Go- 
 thic 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 Ger- 
 man slaves, mad to revenge themselves on their 
 masters : they were Moors, Ausurian black sa- 
 vages, 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 101 
 
 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 them- 
 selves. 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 be- 
 comes more and more dreadful. Anthemius, Oly- 
 brius, 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 mur- 
 dered all the sooner. None of these need de- 
 tain 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. 
 
102 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 But only for a while, gentlemen, only for a 
 while. Villany is by its very essence self-destruc- 
 tive, 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 
 Home. 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 ^tCdecon, Attila's secre- 
 tary, 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 S. Severi- 
 nus' 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 103 
 
 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 Beli- 
 sarius against the Goths ; his son again, Ulgang, 
 under Belisarius against Persian and Lombard ; 
 his son or grandson was Queen Brunhilda's con- 
 fidant 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 
 body-guards, became a great warrior and popu- 
 lar ; watched his time ; and when Orestes refused 
 
104 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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, a.nd 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. Stripped of his purple, 
 the last Emperor of Home 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 Home. 
 
 Then Odoacer set to work, and not alto- 
 gether 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. Remem- 
 ber 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 HUMAN DELUGE. 105 
 
 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 four- 
 teen 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 
 
106 THE HUMAN DELUGE. 
 
 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 cur- 
 tain 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, magnifi- 
 cently on Saturdays ; drinks very little, and in- 
 stead 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 
 
THE HUMAN DELUGE. 107 
 
 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 
 'inimici sales,' which I cannot translate — some 
 sort of jesting : but biting and cruel insults (com- 
 mon 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 CIVIL IZER. 
 
 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 Rhine- 
 land. South of them, the centre of Gaul still re- 
 mained Roman, governed by Counts of cities, who 
 were all but independent sovereigns, while they 
 confest 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 
 
THE GOTHIC CTVILIZER. 109 
 
 henceforth a tissue of internecine horrors, which 
 you must read for yourselves in the pages of 
 M. Sismondi, or of Gregory of Tours. The Alle- 
 manni (whose name has become among the Franks 
 the general name for Germans) held the lands 
 from the Maine to the Rhsetian 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 Galli- 
 cia, 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 fol- 
 low those of these East Goths, and especially of 
 one man among them, Theodoric, known in Ger- 
 man song as Dietrich of Bern or Verona. 
 
 Interesting exceedingly to us should this great 
 hero be. No man's history better shews the 
 strange relations between the Teutons and the 
 dying Empire : but more ; his life is the first in- 
 stance of a Teuton attempting to found a civilized 
 and ordered state, upon experience drawn from 
 .Roman sources ; of the young world trying to build 
 
110 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 
 V" Woden. Unable to write, he founded a great king- 
 dom 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 nine- 
 teenth 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 con- 
 querors 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-wor- 
 ship' 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 
 
THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. Ill 
 
 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 1 .' It 
 may be true. If it be true, it is a very high 
 compliment. It was not from his Roman civili- 
 zation, 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 un- 
 stable, wrest it to their own destruction ; and pre- 
 sume upon it to indulge their own passions, under 
 Byronic excuses of 'genius' or 'muscular Christian- 
 ity.' 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 tha character of 
 
 1 Dr Sheppard, p. 297. 
 
112 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 
 
THE GOTHIC CTVILIZER. ] 13 
 
 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 vic- 
 tory is complete; and he turns away in the very 
 moment of the greatest temptation, from the be- 
 witching 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 Constanti- 
 nople 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 
 
114 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 strength and stature, and became, to all appear- 
 ance, a Goth of the Goths ; going adventures with 
 six thousand volunteers against the Sarmatee, 
 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 him- 
 self, at his father's death, sole king of the Ostro- 
 goths. 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 GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 115 
 
 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 intoler- 
 able for them, Amals, sons of Odin, to be in- 
 sulted 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 Con- 
 stantinople 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 en- 
 ticed 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 
 
116 THE GOTHIC CIVIL1ZP:R. 
 
 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 Augustulus 
 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 dis- 
 heartened, 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. 
 
THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 117 
 
 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 ? "Which- 
 ever 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 them- 
 selves, as he curses the Amal. 
 
 1 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 pro- 
 mised 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 ? 
 
1.18 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 complain- 
 ing of treachery ; the One-eyed demanding in- 
 demnity for all his losses. The Emperor was furi- 
 ous. 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 
 
THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 119 
 
 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, de- 
 feating 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 Em- 
 peror's battles against all rebels, and he fought 
 them, to return irritated, complaining (justly or 
 
120 THE GOTHIC CIVIL1ZER. 
 
 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, reck- 
 lessly from hand to mouth, drinking and gambling 
 till their families were in want. They send to the 
 Amal. ' While thou art revelling at Koman ban- 
 quets, we are starving — come back ere we are 
 ruined.' 
 
 They were jealous, too, of the success of Odo- 
 acer and his mercenaries. He was growing now 
 to be a great power; styling himself ' King of 
 nations*,' giving away to the Visigoths the Nar- 
 bonnaise, the last remnant of the Western Em- 
 pire ; collecting round him learned Romans like 
 Symmachus, Boethius, and Cassiodorus ; respect- 
 ing the Catholic clergy; and seemingly doing 
 his best to govern well. His mercenaries, how- 
 ever, would not be governed. Under their violence 
 and oppression agriculture and population were 
 both failing ; till Pope Gelasius speaks of ' ^Emi- 
 
 * Had he actually taken the name of Theodoric, Theuderic, 
 Dietrich, which signifies much the same thing as ' King of nations'? 
 
THE GOTHIC C1VILIZER. 121 
 
 lia ; Tuscia, ceterseque provincise 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 ^Edecon 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 
 Atfcila? 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 Teu- 
 tons 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 Rugien 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 Fele- 
 theus, or Fava, back to Italy, with Gisa his 
 'noxious wife;' and with them many Roman Chris- 
 
122 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 tians, 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 Homans 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 un- 
 provoked) 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 fight- 
 ing 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 GOTHIC CTVILIZER. 123 
 
 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 feu- 
 dal 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 Yalesian 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 won- 
 
124 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZEK. 
 
 derful, 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, grind- 
 ing 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 Gepidse, 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 Aqui- 
 leia. 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 
 
THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 1.25 
 
 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 de- 
 tected, after awhile, conspiring against Dietrich, 
 and put to death in some dark fashion. Gib- 
 bon, 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 remem- 
 bers that the very men who tell the story are 
 Dietrich's own enemies. By far the most import- 
 ant of them, the author of the Yalesian Frag- 
 ment, 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, unex- 
 
1*20 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 ampled in the history of those centuries. Between 
 the days of the Antonines and those of Charle- 
 magne, 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 mer- 
 cenaries were, and what right they had to the 
 lands. At least it was done so, says Cassiodo- 
 rus, 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. Die- 
 trich, 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 ex- 
 act. 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 
 
THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 127 
 
 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 in- 
 formers, 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 evolu- 
 tions which had so often given the disciplined 
 Roman the victory over the undisciplined Goth, 
 till every pomcerium (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 
 
128 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 repair- 
 ed or founded ; to build seems to have been Die- 
 trich'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, some- 
 thing 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 ex- 
 tended were Florence, Genoa, Pisa, Milan, Naples 
 and Bologna.' Of these the great sea-ports, espe- 
 cially Venice, were founded not by Goths, but by 
 Roman and Greek fugitives : but it was the secu- 
 rity 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 
 
THE GOTHIC CIVILIZED. 129 
 
 people, and of the old Roman, formed a new man- 
 ner 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, 
 1 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 
 Greek 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 Yarni, kings 
 of the Herules, kings of the Thuringer, (who 
 were still heathens beyond the Black forest), call- 
 ing 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 Boman population, and on the morals and 
 social state of Borne 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. 
 
 9 
 
130 THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 won- 
 derful bombast to be met with, even in that age 
 of infimse Latinitatis. One can only explain their 
 style by supposing that King Dietrich, having sup- 
 plied 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 Csesars 
 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 pieta- 
 tis recidit mitigata districtio; et sub beneficio 
 prsestat, qui pcenam debitam moderatione consi- 
 derata 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 Vol- 
 cano, among the Liparis. As a curial is a gentle- 
 man and a government magistrate, the punish- 
 
THE GOTHIC CTVILIZER. 131 
 
 ment 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 con- 
 tinually 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 scory of Strom- 
 boli 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 Die- 
 trich's opinion. Did he felicitate himself like a 
 simple Teuton, on the wonderful learning and elo- 
 quence 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 
 
 9—2 
 
132 THE GOTHIC CIVIL1ZER. 
 
 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 say- 
 ings (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 has gold, or a devil, cannot hide it.' 
 
 And 
 
 1 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 is 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 beard- 
 less — a rare case among the Goths — with masses 
 of golden ringlets, and black eyebrows over c oculos 
 
THE GOTHIC CIVILIZER. 133 
 
 csesios,' 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 con- 
 sequences 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 Philosophise 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. 
 
Dietrich's end. 135 
 
 The old heathen would have attributed his mis- 
 adventures to a (pBovos Oeoov, 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 irri- 
 tated 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 
 
136 Dietrich's end. 
 
 on ruling, or see their country ruined ; for all de- 
 pends 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 rind 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 
 
DIETRICH'S END. 137 
 
 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 pre- 
 serving the Roman law and rights, while practi- 
 cally it cared for no law nor right at all. Die- 
 trich 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 
 
138 Dietrich's end. 
 
 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 Constanti- 
 nople, on the grounds of religion ; because he 
 was persecuting the Arian Goths at Constanti- 
 nople, 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 ? 
 
DIETRICH'S END. 139 
 
 How far they were facts, we never shall ex- 
 actly 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 Em- 
 pire 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 that 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 unscrupul- 
 
140 Dietrich's end. 
 
 ous 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 Dar- 
 danian ; how his real name was Uprauda (up- 
 right), 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 con- 
 vulse his own Empire by beginning a violent 
 persecution against the Arians. He was danger- 
 ous 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, 
 
Dietrich's end, 141 
 
 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 under- 
 stand 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, 
 
142 dietkich's end. - 
 
 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 ex- 
 perience 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 elec- 
 tion, he had had too good proof that the eccle- 
 siastics 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 Mani- 
 chees — 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 
 
Dietrich's end. 143 
 
 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 Ana- 
 stasius ; 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 
 at Genoa their houses had been sacked, and their 
 synagogues burnt ; and Dietrich, having com- 
 pelled 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 him- 
 self, 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 
 
144 DIETRICH'S END. 
 
 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 Cochkeus (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 Al- 
 binus, Boethius answered, ' It is false : but if Albi- 
 nus 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, 
 
Dietrich's end. 145 
 
 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 Symma- 
 chus 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 Borne 
 were forged; how could he hope for the impos- 
 sible : 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 Die- 
 trich 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 Bomani nomi- 
 nis 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 utter- 
 ances 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' 
 
 10 
 
146 Dietrich's end. 
 
 famous book is such another as the Eikon Basi- 
 like. 
 
 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/ Ami- 
 gast, Trigulla, and other greedy barbarians. There 
 was, of course, a Gothic party and a Boman party 
 about the court; and each hated the other bitter- 
 ly. Dietrich had favoured the Bomans. But the 
 Goths could not have seen such men as Symma- 
 chus and Boethius the confidants and counsellors 
 of the Amal, without longing for their downfall; 
 and if, as Boethius and the Catholic historians say, 
 the wdiole tragedy arose out of a Gothic plot to 
 destroy the Boman party, such things have hap- 
 pened but too often in the world's history. The 
 only facts which make against the story are, that 
 Cyprianus the accuser was a Boman, and that 
 Cassiodorus, who must have belonged to the 
 Boman 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 Justi- 
 nian, 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 
 
Dietrich's end. 147 
 
 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 Ro- 
 man 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 "Theo- 
 doric the Great." 
 
 Pope John seems to have fairly earned his 
 imprisonment. For the two others, we can only, 
 
 10—2 
 
148 Dietrich's end. 
 
 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. Sit- 
 ting at dinner (so the story runs), the head of 
 a fish took in Dietrich's fancy the shape of Sym- 
 machus' head, the upper teeth biting the lip, the 
 great eyes staring at him. He sprang up in hor- 
 ror ; 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 con- 
 temporaries, who all believed it, saw in it proof 
 
Dietrich's end. 149 
 
 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 inno- 
 cent. 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 Boe- 
 thius, would needs bring up her son Athalaric in 
 Boman learning, and favour the Bomans 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 Boman 
 tendencies, her Boman education of the lad. One 
 
150 Dietrich's end. 
 
 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 Amala- 
 suentha, 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 com- 
 pany 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 Justi- 
 nian. 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 
 
DIETRICH S END. 151 
 
 male heir of the royal Anialungs. 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. Theo- 
 datus, 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 am- 
 bassador 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 destroy- 
 ed utterly the civilization of Dietrich's long and 
 prosperous reign, left Italy a desert, and extermi- 
 nated the Poman 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 can- 
 not 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 
 
THE NEMESIS OE THE GOTHS. 153 
 
 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 Jus- 
 tin 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, wander- 
 ing 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, inexpli- 
 cable ; — marrying deliberately the wickedest of all >/ 
 women, plainly not for mere beauty's sake, but 
 possibly because' he saw in her a congenial intel- 
 lect ; — faithful and loving to her and she to him, 
 amid al] 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 ex- 
 ample, 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 discern- 
 ment of the value of Roman law) to put a 
 
154 THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 
 
 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 re- 
 member, became possible for Justinian by Beli- 
 sarius' 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 villany 
 about money ; had been struck down in the road 
 by the man he had injured ; and there had his 
 throat cut, 'resupinus instar victimse jugulatus.' 
 
 He had consulted a Jew diviner just before, 
 who had given him a warning. Thirty pigs, sig- 
 nifying 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 
 
THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 155 
 
 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 feel- 
 ing 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 inextri- 
 cably 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 
 
156 THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 
 
 pages of old Procopius, the last good historian 
 of the old world. 
 
 Moreover, and this is most important, Belisa- 
 rius raised the native population against the Goths. 
 As he had done in Africa, when in one short cam- 
 paign he utterly destroyed the now effeminate 
 aristocracy of the Vandals, so he did in Italy. 
 By real justice and kindness; by proclaiming him- 
 self 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 in- 
 habitants of Italy. 
 
 Belisarius and the Goths met, and the Goths 
 conquered. But to take Home 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 de- 
 stroyed, now by Boman, now by Goth. The lands 
 lay waste, the people disappeared in tens of thou- 
 sands. 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 
 Bimini and the country round by Bomans; hor- 
 rors 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 
 
THE NEMESIS OE THE GOTHS. 157 
 
 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 treat- 
 ed for peace ; and then followed a strange peripe- 
 teia, 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, mean- 
 ing 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 
 
158 THE KEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 
 
 things as that. But the folly was committed. 
 Belisarius carried them away captive to Constan- 
 tinople, 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 Borne, 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 Teu- 
 ton 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 them- 
 selves in the country. A Boman came to com- 
 plain 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 quiet- 
 ly and firmly. They may choose to-daij, whether 
 
THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 159 
 
 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 re- 
 conquered. Belisarius had to be sent back again 
 to Italy : but the envy, whether of Justinian him- 
 self, 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 reinforce- 
 ments, and got them ; but too late. He could 
 not relieve Borne. The Goths had massed them- 
 selves round the city, and Belisarius, having got 
 
160 THE NEMESIS OE THE GOTHS. 
 
 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 chil- 
 dren 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 Proco- 
 pius, 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 NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 161 
 
 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 cry- 
 ing for mercy ; and Pusticiana, daughter of Sym- 
 machus, 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 Pome. 
 
 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 Pusticiana. She 
 had sent money to the Poman 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 Pavenna, 7,000 Greeks had con- 
 
 11 
 
162 THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 
 
 quered 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 every- 
 thing 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 hence- 
 forth. 
 
 Then he sends to Justinian. He shall with- 
 draw 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 bat- 
 
THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 163 
 
 ters 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 pur- 
 pose, and he marches away with all his captives, 
 leaving not a living soul in Home. 
 
 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 Borne. 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 Teu- 
 ton 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 Bur- 
 gundians, 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 Boman one — Teuton 
 must destroy Teuton. And it succeeds. 
 
 In spite of some trouble with the Franks, 
 who are holding Venetia, he marches down vic- 
 torious through the wasted land, and Totila 
 
 11—2 
 
164 THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 
 
 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 con- 
 fusion, 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 be- 
 fore 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 (Ship-ward) 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 
 
THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 165 
 
 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 de- 
 termined 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 get- 
 ting all Italy for themselves. Narses storms 
 Rome — or rather a little part of it round Ha- 
 drian'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 phan- 
 tom senate, phantom consuls, under the Romani 
 nominis umbram. The Goths catch them, and kill 
 
166 THE NEMESIS OP THE GOTHS. 
 
 them to a man. And there is an end of the Sena- 
 tus 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 innume- 
 rable fleet, cuts off their supplies ; and then the 
 end comes. The Goths will die like desperate 
 men on foot. They burst out of cainp, 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 
 
THE NEMESIS OP THE GOTHS. 167 
 
 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 Ger- 
 mans 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 Nibel- 
 ungen 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 i$ 
 
168 THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 
 
 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 Poman 
 people. After war and famine followed as usual 
 dreadful pestilence, and Italy lay waste for years. 
 Henceforth the Italian population was not Poman, 
 but a mixture of all races, with a most powerful, 
 but an entirely new type of character. Pome 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. Put 
 I have indicated a stronger reason already : — they 
 perished because they were a slave-holding aristo- 
 cracy. 
 
 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 de- 
 bauch 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 
 
THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 169 
 
 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 weak- 
 ness of all slaveholding states ; the very weakness 
 which had ruined, in past years, the Roman Em- 
 pire. 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 them- 
 selves 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 num- 
 bers ; while below them and apart from them lay 
 the great mass of the population, helpless, un- 
 armed, 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 
 
170 THE NEMESIS OF THE GOTHS. 
 
 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. 
 
 PAUL US Dl AC 'ONUS. 
 
 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' 
 
172 PAULUS DIACONUS. 
 
 words. He too speaks of thern 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 an- 
 nexed to the great Frank Empire, but without 
 losing anything of their distinctive national cha- 
 racter. He did not foresee that they would 
 become the architects, the merchants, the gold- 
 smiths, 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 Lombard}^ over a pawnbro- 
 ker'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. 
 
PAULUS DIACONl'S. 173 
 
 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 Pa via, and then, when Charlemagne 
 destroyed the Lombard monarchy, seems to have 
 been much with the great king at Aix. He cer- 
 tainly 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 fore- 
 fathers, 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 
 
174 PAULUS DIACONUS. 
 
 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 pesti- 
 lence. 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, Quen- 
 land, 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 fore- 
 fathers 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 
 
PAULUS DIAC0NUS. 175 
 
 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 Boman 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 judg- 
 ment 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 1 . The Norse 
 
 1 With west-countrymen, to 'scrattle' still means to scramble, or 
 shuffle about. 
 
176 PAULUS DLACONUg. 
 
 discoverers of America recognized the Skrsellings 
 in the Esquimaux, and fled from them in panic 
 terror; till that furious virago Freydisa, Thorvard's 
 wife, and Eirek the Ked'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 ma} T , they appear to Paul (or 
 rather to his informants, Wendish merchants pro- 
 bably, 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. 
 
PAULUS DIACONUS. 177 
 
 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 Villain (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 rejDly — 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 'Queavolo 
 poa<i, that inexplicable wonder of the old Greeks 
 and Bomans, running up far inland at the mouths of 
 the Seine and Loire ; and he has to get it explained 
 
 12 
 
178 PAULUS DIAC0NUS. 
 
 somehow, before lie can go forward with a clear con- 
 science. One of the navels seems to be the Mahl- 
 strom in Norway. Of the place of the other there 
 is no doubt. It is close to Evodia insula, seem- 
 ingly 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, ' palpi- 
 tating 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 pra3li- 
 batis,' 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 
 
PAULUS DIAC0NUS. 179 
 
 Teutonic verse into dead Latin prose, and calls 
 De Woden et Frea qusedarn ridicula fabula ; but 
 can't help for the life of him telling it, apolo- 
 gizing all the time. How the "Winils (his own 
 folk) went out to tight 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 war- 
 riors, 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 
 meaus long axes — (bard = an axe) — a word which 
 we keep in partizan, and 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 1 , and more than hints that the name is 
 
 English Language, Vol. I. p. 200. 
 
 12- 
 
180 PAULO'S DIACONUS. 
 
 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 an- 
 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 con- 
 querors of Gaul. Others say that it means 
 the moorland, others something else. All that 
 they will ever find out we may see for our- 
 selves already. — A little tribe of valiant fair- 
 haired men, whether all Teutons, or, as Mr Latham 
 thinks, Sclavonians with Teuton leaders, still inti- 
 mately 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 emi- 
 gration 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 
 
PAULUS DIACONUS. 181 
 
 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 Scan- 
 dinavia 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 ex- 
 plains by pointing out, in the Traveller's Song, 
 a tribe of Hundings (Houndings) sons of the 
 hound; and how the Lombards sent out a cham- 
 pion, who fought the champion of the Assipitti, 
 and so gained leave to go on their way. 
 
 Forward they go, toward the south-east, seem- 
 ingly along the German marches, the debateable 
 land between Teuton and Sclav, which would, 
 mechanically speaking, be the line of least resist- 
 ance. We hear of Gothland — wherever that hap- 
 pened to be just then; of Anthaib, the land held 
 by the Sclavonian Anten, and Bathaib, possibly 
 the land held by the Gepidse, 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 
 
182 PAULUS DIACONUS. 
 
 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 
 
PAULUS DIACONUS. 183 
 
 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 Bugiland, the 
 country north of Vienna, and destroyed the Bu- 
 gians, and Fava their king, then the Lombards 
 went down into the waste land of the Bugians, be- 
 cause 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. Bather it is the western plain of Hun- 
 gary 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. Baul 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 Boman armies, despised the wild Lombards, 
 and disdained to use armour against them, fight- 
 ing with no clothes save girdles. Bodulf 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 
 
184 PAULUS D1AC0NUS. 
 
 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 Aud-win, 'the old or auld conqueror'), 
 who brought them over the Danube into Panno- 
 nia, 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 fore- 
 court 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 Gepidse 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. 
 
PAULUS DIAC0NUS. 185 
 
 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 Gepidse 
 call in Cutuguri, a Hunnic tribe, to help them; 
 then, says Procopius, Aldwin, helped by Poman 
 mercenaries, under Amalfrid the Goth, Theodo- 
 ric's great nephew, and brother-in-law of Aldwin, 
 has a great fight with the Gepidse. But Paul 
 knows naught of all this: with him it is not 
 Aldwin, but Alboin his son, who destroj^s the 
 Gepidse. 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 .ZElfwine, 
 ' 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 Gepidse 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 
 
186 PAULUS DIAC0NUS, 
 
 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 
 
PAULUS DIACONUS. 187 
 
 a daughter of Clotaire, king of the Franks : and 
 now lie 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, never- 
 theless : 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 
 Gepidse 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 
 
188 PAULUS DlACOHUS. 
 
 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 
 Boinans ; 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 
 
PAULUS DIAC0NUS. 189 
 
 Ravenna, a sort of satrap, like those of the Per- 
 sian Emperors, and representing the Emperor 
 of Constantinople, was rewarded for all his con- 
 quests 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, 
 
190 PATJLUS DIACONUS. 
 
 Bulgars, Sarin atse, Pannonians, Sueves, and Nori- 
 cans ; 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 laud 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 there- 
 at, 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. 
 
PAULUS DIACONUS. 191 
 
 None, you mast 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 follow- 
 ing them into their new abode. Then the human 
 deluge spread itself slowly over the Lombard 
 plains. None fought with them, and none gain- 
 said; for all the land was waste. The plague of 
 three years before, and the famine which follow- 
 ed 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 
 
192 PAULUS DIACONUS. 
 
 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 Home 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 pas- 
 sionate 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 Rosa- 
 
PAULUS DIAC0NUS. 193 
 
 mund did a deed of darkness, and deceived Pere- 
 deo ; 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, Rosa- 
 mund 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 Prankish wife ; and how Longinus the 
 exarch persuaded her to poison Helmichis, and 
 marry him; and how she gave Helmichis the poi- 
 soned 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 Constan- 
 tinople ; 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 chamber- 
 lains 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 
 
 13 
 
194 PAULUS DIAC0NUS. 
 
 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 Nibel- 
 ungen 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 
 yon. 
 
 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 allow- 
 ance for the circumstances, utterly novel and unex- 
 pected, in which they found themselves during 
 the Teutonic invasions. Thus, perhaps, we may 
 
 13—2 
 
196 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEX. 
 
 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. Jus- 
 tified 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 say- 
 ing. And yet was not every man from the begin- 
 ning 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 igno- 
 rances, 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 in- 
 clined to ask, 'Why was it not done better?' — the 
 more inclined to ask, ' Could it have been done 
 better V 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 sus- 
 pects, after experience of their chronicles and 
 legends, sufficient to make one thoroughly detect 
 the evil which was in their system : but sufficient 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 197 
 
 also to make one thoroughly love many of the 
 men themselves. 
 
 A few desultory sketches, some carefully his- 
 torical, the rest as carefully compiled from com- 
 mon facts, may serve best to illustrate my 
 meaning. 
 
 The monk and clergyman, whether celibate or 
 not, worked oh 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, wea- 
 ried with the burden of his sins, stumbles on one 
 of these Einsiedlern, ' 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 
 
198 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 wine- 
 board, and how he went about to have slain him 
 privily, but could not; and then how he went and 
 wasted Marculfs lands, house with byre, kine 
 with corn, till a strong woman smote him over 
 the head with a quernstone, 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 other- 
 wise, 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 199 
 
 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 child- 
 ish 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 
 
200 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 blood-thirsty. 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 201 
 
 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 can- 
 not 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 vul- 
 turine beak, picking out the elements of Mani- 
 chseism, 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 cir- 
 cumstance 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 
 
202 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 the beauty of goodness, and felt the strength of 
 it, and worshipped it in blind savage admiration. 
 Read Roswede's Vitas 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.' 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 203 
 
 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 cceli 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 Brid- 
 gets, 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 emi- 
 nently good women. 
 
 It matters little whether these legends are 
 
204 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 historically correct. Their value lies in the moral 
 of them. And as for their real historical correct- 
 ness, the Straussian argument that no such per- 
 sons 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 per- 
 sons who had not seen living instances of that 
 character. Man's imagination does not create; it 
 only reproduces and recombines its own expe- 
 rience. 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, stand- 
 ing 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 ceil, — it matters little, I say, to the 
 wise man, whether St Patrick himself owned the 
 ancient image which is worshipped on that moun- 
 tain 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 205 
 
 till you get to Tartary and the Buddhists; — such 
 a bell as caine (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 ring- 
 ing of his bell, till he conquered not by the brute 
 force of a Hercules and Theseus, and the mon- 
 ster-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 
 
206 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 forth the victory of a good and beneficent man 
 over evil, whether of matter or of spirit. It mat- 
 ters 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 moun- 
 tain 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 Ire- 
 land 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 207 
 
 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 patron- 
 ess, 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,v/* 
 and darts, and glibs of long hair hanging over . 
 their hypo-gorillaceous visages, coming to the pro- 
 phet maiden, and asking her to take their land, 
 for they could make no decent use of it them- 
 selves; 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 howl 
 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 be- 
 lieve 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 
 
208 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 he stopped the plague at Vienna by his prayers. 
 None of us need attribute to anything but his 
 sagacity the Divine revelations whereby he pre- 
 dicted 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 gen- 
 tleman, 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 cer- 
 tainly could have come for no other reason, unless 
 to buy slaves; for Austria was at that time the 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 209 
 
 very highway of the nations, the centre of the 
 human Mahlstrom, in which Huns, Gepiden, All- 
 mannen, Rugen, and a dozen wild tribes more, 
 wrestled up and down round the starving and be- 
 leaguered 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 go- 
 verned ; he turned aside the raids of the wild Ger- 
 man 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 some- 
 
 14 
 
210 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 times seemed miraculously to foretel 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 in- 
 tellect, 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.' 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 211 
 
 They also tell of him (and this is fact and his- 
 tory) 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 monas- 
 tery of Iona, and that succession of abbots from 
 whom Christianity spread over the south of Scot- 
 land and north of England, under his great suc- 
 cessor 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 try- 
 ing 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 re- 
 lieving 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 
 
 14—2 
 
212 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 ene- 
 mies, and his Teutonic rivals — harrying, slaughter- 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 213 
 
 ing, 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 
 Iioman 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, organ- 
 ized some form of orderly life out of the chaos of 
 blood and ashes, in the name of God and St Quem- 
 deusvult 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 Home, 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 
 
214 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 deso- 
 late 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 as- 
 sumed 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 1 
 They are men of blood too, men of evil lives; 
 and conscience makes them cowards. They begin 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 215 
 
 to think that they have gone too far. Could they 
 see the saint, and make it up with him somewhat 1 
 
 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 civili- 
 zation, 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 
 
216 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 pro- 
 bably 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, till 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 with- 
 out 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, Seecamber ! " said St Bemigius 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 217 
 
 to the great conquering King Clovis, when he 
 stept into the baptismal font — (not "Most Gra- 
 cious Majesty," or "illustrious Csesar," or "by 
 the grace of God Lord of the Franks," but See- 
 camber, 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 honor- 
 able, 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 ac- 
 
218 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 cursed 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 more- 
 over 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 219 
 
 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 free- 
 holds. 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 preserva- 
 tion and even resuscitation of the municipal institu- 
 tions of the towns, has been discust so well and 
 fully by M. Guizot, M. Sismondi, and Sir James 
 
220 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 im- 
 portant 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 dif- 
 ferent 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. rLt 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 ; 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 221 
 
 and by it they conquered, because it was true, 
 and came from God. > 
 
 1 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 na- 
 tural, but spiritual also, and therefore just and 
 right. 
 
 -V- Again, the clergy were the only organic rem- 
 nants 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 perpe- 
 tuate that Roman law, and to introduce it as far 
 as they could among their conquerors, to the ex- 
 pulsion of the old Teutonic laws; and they suc- 
 ceeded on the whole.-i Of that more hereafter. 
 Observe now, that as' their rights dated from times 
 which to the Teutons were pre-historic, their state- 
 ments could not be checked by conquerors who 
 could not even read. Thence rose the temptation 
 to forge ; to forge legends, charters, dotations, 
 
222 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 state- 
 ments 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 Koman congregations, and on them- 
 selves, as what in fact and law they were, the 
 rightful owners of the soil. They were but defend- 
 ing 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 Constan- 
 tine 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 223 
 
 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 in- 
 volved a corresponding power of unmaking, if the 
 king rebelled against the Church, and so cut him- 
 self off from Christendom. At best, he was one of 
 1 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 sa- 
 cred 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 
 
224 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 Henry II., was not, as M. Thierry thinks, the An- 
 glo-Saxon defying the Norman. He was the re- 
 presentative 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 boun- 
 daries, and separate Christian organizations, these 
 demands of the Church became intolerable in rea- 
 son, 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 
 Hoinish 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 225 
 
 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 good of the Church did not be- 
 long 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 English- 
 man, Frank, Lombard, or Goth : but as the repre- 
 sentative, by an hereditary descent, considered all 
 the more real because it was spiritual and not carnal, 
 of the Roman Church; to prevent his being en- 
 tangled, 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 mar- 
 ried secular priests, and replace them by Benedic- 
 tine 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, under- 
 
 15 
 
226 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 stand 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 com- 
 mon 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, 
 kinc 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 227 
 
 Denis; how he founded many rich convents; how 
 he was the friend, or rather pupil, of St Arnulf 
 of Metz, St Ouier, and above all of St Eloi — 
 whose story I recommend you to read, charm- 
 ingly told, in Mr Maitland's 'Dark Ages/ pp. 
 8 1 — 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 to- 
 ward 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 Caia- 
 phas, thrust into the Stygian whirlpools and 
 
 15—2 
 
228. THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 Acherontic combustion of the sempiternal Tar- 
 tarus.' 
 
 Those words, which, with slight variations, are 
 a common formula of cursing appended to monas- 
 tic charters against all who should infringe them, 
 remind us rather of the sixth book of Virgil's 
 JEneid 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 
 back-ground of all human thought and action for 
 more than iooo 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 cer- 
 tain 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 
 
THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 229 
 
 alive: only in the Church, ' extra quani 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 un- 
 seen 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 domi- 
 nion 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 ter- 
 rible 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 uni- 
 versal existence of those beliefs, and the historic 
 fact that they gave the clergy a character super- 
 natural, magical, divine, with a reserve of power 
 before which all trembled, from the beggar to the 
 
230 THE CLERGY AND THE HEATHEN. 
 
 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 excom- 
 munication 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, fear- 
 fully 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 Borne were imitated by Christ- 
 ian 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, indi- 
 viduals, 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 fel- 
 lows, and thereby leavening and elevating their 
 
232 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 strug- 
 gle to assert his own personality and his own 
 convictions. Till that point is reached, the his- 
 tory 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 there- 
 fore undiscoverable. 
 
 The early history of the Teutonic race, there- 
 fore, 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, un- 
 broken 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 gene- 
 rations, 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 rough- 
 ness is not discomfort, where the taste has not 
 been educated. A Red Indian sleeps as well in a 
 
THE MONK A CIYILIZER. 233 
 
 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 con- 
 structed being, and can live and multiply any- 
 where, 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 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 con- 
 quered Europe in the face of centuries of destruc- 
 tive 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 ori- 
 ginal 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 
 
234 THE MOXK A CIVILIZES. 
 
 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 over- 
 stocked. This is the case with our own gipsies, 
 and with many savage tribes — the Red Indians, 
 for instance — and accounts for their general health- 
 iness: the unhealthy being all dead, in the first 
 struggle for existence. But then these gipsies, 
 and the Red Indians, do not increase in num- 
 bers, but the contrary; while our forefathers in- 
 creased 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 pro- 
 portion 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, in- 
 crease. In times of war and anarchy, when every 
 one is shifting for himself, only the strongest and 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 235 
 
 shrewdest can stand. Woe to those who cannot 
 take care of themselves. The fools and cowards, 
 the weakly and sickly, are killed, starved, neg- 
 lected, or in other ways brought to grief. But 
 when law and order come, they protect those who 
 cannot protect themselves, and the fools and cow- 
 ards, the weakly and sickly, are supported at the 
 public expense, and allowed to increase and mul- 
 tiply 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 
 
236 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 w T ould 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 
 
THE MONK A CIVIL1ZEU. 237 
 
 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 dark- 
 ness 1 . 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 
 
 1 Cf. Montalembert, Moines d' Occident. 
 
238 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 labour- 
 ers, — the 'masses' of our manufacturing work- 
 men, 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 cen- 
 tury 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 him- 
 self, he became a new man, and a true man. 
 The preachers may have mixed up words with 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 239 
 
 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 Evan- 
 gelical 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 
 
240 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 monas- 
 teries 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 organi- 
 zation, 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 or- 
 ganization 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 
 
THE MONK A CIVILTZER. 241 
 
 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 monas- 
 teries, 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 per- 
 petual 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 
 
 16 
 
242 THE MONK A C1VILIZER. 
 
 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 pe- 
 culiar 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 in- 
 credible ; 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 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 243 
 
 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 de- 
 votion, 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 Chris- 
 tianize, 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 prim- 
 aeval forest, hardly-tilled common, or to be de- 
 scribed 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 
 
 16—2 
 
244 THE MONK A CIYILIZER. 
 
 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 colo- 
 nizers Europe owes, I verily believe, among a 
 hundred benefits, this, which all Englishmen will 
 appreciate ; that Roman agriculture not only re- 
 vived in the countries which were once the Em- 
 pire, but spread from thence eastward and north- 
 ward, into the principal wilderness of the Teuton 
 and Sclavonic races. 
 
 I cannot, I think, shew you better what man- 
 ner 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 pre- 
 
THE MONK A CIVIL1ZER. 245 
 
 served, for a token that wisdom is justified of all 
 her children. 
 
 It stands at length in Pertz's admirable 'Monu- 
 menta Historica/ among many another like bio- 
 graphy, 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 over- 
 throwing 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 stop- 
 ping the internecine wars by which they were tear- 
 ing 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; 
 
246 THE MONK A CIVIL1ZER. 
 
 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 civi- 
 lizer, 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 like- 
 wise. 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 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 247 
 
 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 Wig- 
 bert, 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 ; pro- 
 found in understanding, shrewd of thought, pru- 
 dent of speech, fair of face, sober of carriage, 
 honourable in morals, ' spotless in life, by sweet- 
 ness, 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 ear- 
 nestly to the people ;' and his preaching wrought 
 wonders among them. 
 
 Three years he preached in his Phineland 
 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. 
 
 y 
 
248 THE MONK A CIVIL1ZER. 
 
 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 
 j Jail, and set it down and printed it in a Pilgrim's 
 j 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 
 
THE MONK A C1VIL1ZER. 249 
 
 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, pray- 
 ing 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 any- 
 thing which we see now; — so utterly unlike any- 
 thing 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 
 
250 THE MONK A CIVIL1ZER. 
 
 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 reli- 
 gious 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 
 'urwald' 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 
 worldly 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. 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 251 
 
 Peasants ventured into it a few miles, to cut 
 timber, and find pannage for their swine, and 
 whispered wild legends of the ugly things there- 
 in — and sometimes, too, never came home. Away 
 it stretched from the fair Bhineland, 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, cer- 
 tainly, 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, crudest of all the tribes ; who worshipped 
 at the Irmensul, and had an old blood-feud against 
 
v/ 
 
 252 THE M03K A CIVIL1ZER. 
 
 the Franks ; heathen Thuringer, who had mur- 
 dered St Kilian the Irishman at Wurzburg ; 
 heathen Slavs, of different tribes, who had in- 
 troduced 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 gen- 
 tlest 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 Tannerhauser 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, de- 
 stroy 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 hea- 
 then; 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' 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 253 
 
 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 Abra- 
 ham, 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 water- 
 shed, and the meadows, and springs, and so forth, 
 in a very practical way. And St Boniface an- 
 swered, 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 
 
254 THE MONK A CTVILIZER. 
 
 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 Ruo- 
 hen-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 pre- 
 pared, and would reveal in His good time. 
 
 And this time Sturmi, possibly 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 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 255 
 
 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 multi- 
 tude 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 him- 
 self 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 
 
256 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 tapped a tree-trunk with his axe (some backwoods- 
 man'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 thank- 
 ful 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 Sturm i 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 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 257 
 
 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 pas- 
 ture, and pannage of swine; and Sturmi and 
 seven brethren set out thither, 'in the year of 
 our Lord 744, in the first month (April, presum- 
 ably), 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 hun- 
 dred 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 
 
 17 
 
258 THE MONK A CTV1LIZER. 
 
 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 mo- 
 dern 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; 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZES,. 259 
 
 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 Boni- 
 face was martyred at last by the Friesland hea- 
 thens, 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 wil- 
 derness which God hath 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 wor- 
 ship at his tomb, after the fashion of those days. 
 And Fulda became a noble abbey, with its dom- 
 church, library, schools, workshops, farm-steads, 
 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 
 
 17—2 
 
260 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 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-loh 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 Boman 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-loh, 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 
 
THE MONK A CIV1LIZER. 261 
 
 any man, by throwing their swords into either 
 scale. They would be men of peace, and see what 
 could be done so. "Was not that 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 murder- 
 ing 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, accord- 
 ing 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 back- 
 woods 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 
 
262 THE MONK A C1VILIZER. 
 
 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 him- 
 self. 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. Be- 
 cause 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 con- 
 trast too easily, and too freely, the fallen and 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 263 
 
 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, be- 
 cause 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 sanitarjr 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 Boman 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 almsgivers, 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 mo- 
 
264 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 ment, 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 monas- 
 teries, considering the tedious labour of copying, 
 is altogether astonishing. They preserved to us 
 the treasures of classical antiquity. They disco- 
 vered for us the germs of all our modern in- 
 ventions. 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 re- 
 maining 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 mean- 
 est 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 insti- 
 tutions 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 
 
THE MONK A C1VILIZER. 265 
 
 military order, without which men may call them- 
 selves 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 cen- 
 turies when all the outside world was doing its 
 best to trample it out. Remember, as a single 
 instance, that in the Abbot's lodgings 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 
 
266 THE MONK A CTVILIZER. 
 
 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 genera- 
 tion, 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 sanc- 
 tity of marriage was revindicated at the Reform- 
 ation, the monasteries, having identified themselves 
 with celibacy, naturally fell. They could not par- 
 take in the Reformation movement, and rise 
 with it into some higher form of life, as the 
 
THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 267 
 
 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 bom- 
 bastic; 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, 
 1 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 
 
268 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 re- 
 store 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 in- 
 tolerable. 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 break- 
 
THE MONK A CIV1L1ZER. 269 
 
 ing up again ; while almost every A_bbot left his 
 personalities, all his private savings and purchases, 
 to his successor. 
 
 Then again, in an unhappy hour, they dis- 
 covered 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 de- 
 testable 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 ' com- 
 mittees 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 Fran- 
 ciscan, who had not himself a penny in the world, 
 
270 THE MONK A CIVILIZER. 
 
 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 con- 
 ceived, brought forth death. 
 
LECTUEE X. 
 
 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 I have tried to shew you how the Teutonic na- 
 tions were Christianized. I have tried to explain 
 to you why the clergy who converted them were, 
 nevertheless, more or less permanently antago- 
 nistic to them. I shall have, hereafter, to tell 
 you something of one of the most famous in- 
 stances of that antagonism : of the destruction 
 of the liberties of the Lombards by that Latin 
 clergy. But at first you ought to know some- 
 thing 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 
 
272 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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, j6 years after 
 Alboin came into Italy. The cause, he says, was 
 the continual wearying of the poor, and the super- 
 fluous 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 "con- 
 firmed 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 clxxil, 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 commer- 
 cial traveller with a glass of liquor. Whether 
 Rotha gave the garathinx to his barons, or his 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 273 
 
 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 mo- 
 narchy. 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, suc- 
 ceed his father, were old rules: but the barons 
 would, as all history shews, make little of crown- 
 ing 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 crown- 
 ing 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 
 
 18 
 
274 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 it- 
 self. 'The king's heart,' says one of them, 'is 
 in the hand of God.' That is a text of Scrip- 
 ture. What it was meant to mean, one cannot 
 doubt, or by whom it was inserted. The ' Chan- 
 cellor,' 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. 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 275 
 
 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 syllo- 
 gism, 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 re- 
 presents 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 1 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 ' Impe- 
 rialism' growing up now-a-days, under the pre- 
 tentious titles of ' hero-worship,' and 'strong 
 government;' and the British constitution is 
 
27G THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 represented as a clumsy and artificial arrange- 
 ment 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, browm 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 land- 
 holders, 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 law- 
 lessness, 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 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 cam- 
 pionem, 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. 
 
278 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 Punishments by stripes, by imprisonment, or by 
 cruel or degrading methods, there are none. The 
 person of a freeman is sacred, l Vincire et verbe- 
 rare 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 organiza- 
 tion) 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 1 6s., 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 slav T e 
 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 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 279 
 
 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 205. 'Oberos,' or 'curtis 
 ruptura,' that is, making violent entry into a 
 man's homestead, costs 205. 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 125.; 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 were- 
 geld; 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. 
 
280 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 If, again, one had a mind to lose 80 shillings of 
 gold, he need but to commit the offence of ' meer- 
 worphin,' 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 free- 
 man 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 frac- 
 ture up to three — after which they are not count- 
 ed. 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 tough- 
 ness of the Lombard brain-pan, but the extreme 
 necessity of denning 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- 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 281 
 
 masons — belonging, no doubt, to the Roman popu- 
 lation — who were settled about the lake of Como, 
 and were hired, on contract, (as the laws them- 
 selves 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 be- 
 fore their entrance into Italy. 
 
 Then laws of inheritance; on w T hich 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, 
 
282 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 con- 
 duct 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 pro- 
 perty 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 pro- 
 tect the physically w r eaker 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 eman- 
 cipating 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 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 283 
 
 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 wo- 
 men, 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 mis- 
 behaves. 
 
 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 w 7 ho has the mund of her, ex- 
 cept 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 1 200 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 siliquse, beans, i. e. one gold 
 piece — though Pope Gregory makes the solidus 
 
284 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 (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 after- 
 wards, 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 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 285 
 
 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. 
 
 Did, 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 al- 
 lowed to retain, and till it, from father to son. 
 We, in England, had the same distinction be- 
 tween ' Lset,' or l villains' settled on the land, glebse 
 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 away. And again, servus doctus, an 
 educated household slave, whose weregeld is high- 
 er than that of others. 
 
 The laws relating to fugitive slaves seem as 
 merciful as such things can be; and the Lombards 
 
286 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 ferry- 
 men's prowess. One can easily understand how 
 necessary strict laws were, to prevent these ferry- 
 men 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 
 is., if you steal a post, 35., and 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 man or 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 287 
 
 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 in- 
 juring a vineyard, or taking more than tres uvse 
 (bunches of grapes, I presume) from the vine. In- 
 juring land-marks cut on the trees (theclaturas and 
 signaturas) or any other boundary mark, is severe- 
 ly 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 900s. 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, ' batti- 
 dunt 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 cost 2s. ; to dock or crop him, eight-fold the 
 damage; and so on of hurting another man's 
 
288 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 be- 
 longs 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 65. 
 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 men- 
 tion — 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 Chris- 
 tian 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 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 289 
 
 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 con- 
 tinent, 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 de- 
 livered, 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 in- 
 stance, 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 
 
 19 
 
290 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 in- 
 visibly 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 pro- 
 tection of law at all. No one can read the pages 
 of Fredegarius, or Gregory of Tours, without see- 
 ing 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 ; 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 291 
 
 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. Neverthe- 
 less, 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 na- 
 tional attitude which issued in the great Reforma- 
 tion : but it lingers still in Ireland and in Italy. 
 It lingered in France up to the French revolu- 
 tion, 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 ele- 
 ments of Roman law, they did harm by preserving ( 
 therewith other elements — Roman chicane, and 
 Roman cruelty. In that respect, as in others, 
 f Rome conquered her conquerors ; ' and the de- 
 scendants of those Roman lawyers, whom the 
 honest Teutons called adders, and as adders killed 
 
 19 — 2 
 
292 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 in- 
 dependence 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 dark- 
 est 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 
 Manichsean belief in the power and presence of 
 innumerable demons, whose especial victims were 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 293 
 
 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, tor- 
 turing, exposing, burning, young and old, not 
 merely in the witch-mania of the 17th century, 
 but through the whole middle age. It is a de- 
 testable 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 For- 
 nicarium, or Delrio the Jesuit, and see for them- 
 selves 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 Ro- 
 man clergy. 
 
 I do not deny that there was in all this a just, 
 though a terrible, Nemesis. What was the essen- 
 tial 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 
 
294 THE LOMBARD LAWS. 
 
 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 through- 
 out Germany ; English bishops burning in Smith- 
 field Anne Askew, the hapless court- beauty, and 
 her fellow-courtier Mr Lascelles, just as if they had 
 been Essex or Berkshire peasants ; — all these evil- 
 doers 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 'Roinani 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 1 6th 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 
 
THE LOMBARD LAWS. 295 
 
 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 
 oyer the Alps with Alboin — Garibald, the 'bold in 
 war.' May they succeed in the same noble strug- 
 gle 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 XL 
 
 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 1 Our Lady the Mother of God, even Virgin Maria, 
 together with us, protests to you, adjuring you 
 with great obligations, and admonishes and com- 
 mands 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 con- 
 taminated 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 patron- 
 age, and prepare for you in the kingdom of God 
 most shining and glorious tabernacles, promising 
 you the reward of eternal retribution, and the in- 
 finite joys of paradise. 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 297 
 
 ' 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 extin- 
 guished; before your spiritual mother, the holy 
 Church of God, in which you hope to receive eter- 
 nal life, shall be humiliated, invaded, violated, and 
 denied 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 Ro- 
 man 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 peo- 
 ple, 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 pestife- 
 rous augels ; 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. 
 
298 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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 epis- 
 tle 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 boun- 
 daries 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 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 2&9 
 
 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 docu- 
 ments 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 Lom- 
 bards have never stated their case, not even through 
 Paulus Diaconus, who, being a clergyman, pru- 
 dently 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. 
 Pome, you must understand, has become gradually 
 the patrimony of St Peter; the Popes are the 
 practical kings of Pome, possessing, in the name 
 of the Church, much land round Pome, and many 
 estates scattered throughout Italy, and even in 
 Sicily, Gaul, Africa, and the East — estates proba- 
 bly bequeathed by pious people. They have suc- 
 ceeded to this jurisdiction simply by default. They 
 rule Pome, because there is no one else to rule it. 
 We find St Gregory the Great feeding the pauper- 
 masses of Pome, 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 
 
300 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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 Ra- 
 venna : 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 jus- 
 tice, 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-trod- 
 den Romans, so they naturally gravitated toward 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 301 
 
 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 supe- 
 rior 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 an- 
 cient Pome, 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 
 
302 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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 Home ? 
 
 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, king- 
 ship, 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 Boman 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 
 Boman Church, and' (significant, though empty 
 words) 'of the Boman senate and people.' 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 303 
 
 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 here- 
 ditary hatred of the Popes to the Lombards. Its 
 origin is simple enough : but not so its continu- 
 ance. Why they should be nefandissimi in the 
 eyes of Pope Gregory the Great one sees : but why 
 ioo years afterwards, they should be still nefan- 
 dissimi, 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 con- 
 quests — of which Paulus Diaconus says, that vio- 
 lence 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 Pome ; that they had founded two half- 
 independent Dukedoms of Beneventum and Spo- 
 leto, that Autharis had swept over South Italy, 
 and ridden his horse into the sea at Peggio, to 
 strike with his lance a column in the waves, and 
 cry, ' Here ends the Lombard kingdom.' 
 
304 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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 
 nad 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 bury- 
 ing his battle-axe in a tree stem with the cry, 
 'Thus smites Autharis the Lombard.' — This The- 
 odelinda, 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 dia- 
 logues of his, full alike of true piety and earnest- 
 ness, and of childish superstition. But in judging 
 them and him we must bear in mind, that these 
 Lombards became at least by his means Catho- 
 lics, 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 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. o05 
 
 a great lie, plus the very same mistakes like- 
 wise. 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 ? 
 
 Theodolinda had built at Modicsea, 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 how- 
 ever, 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; merci- 
 ful to offenders, chaste and modest, instant in 
 
 20 
 
306 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 prayer, bountiful in alms, equal to the philoso- 
 phers, though he knew no letters, a nourisher of 
 his people, an augrnenter 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 wor- 
 shipped 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 re- 
 nouncing allegiance to the Emperor of Constanti- 
 nople ; and by two famous letters which are still 
 preserved ; in which he tells the Iconoclast Empe- 
 ror, 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 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 307 
 
 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 Bar- 
 barians, 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 Pavenna, 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 Pavenna the very 
 Luitprand who had fought his battles for him, 
 and to restore that Exarchate of Pavenna, of 
 which it was confessed, that its civil quarrels, 
 misrule, and extortions, made it the most miser- 
 able 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 
 
 20—2 
 
308 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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,' c free ;' ' free compa- 
 nions,' or 'free lances,' as they would have been 
 called a few centuries later; who recruited them- 
 selves 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 kin- 
 dred, many of their peculiarities are explained. 
 Falsehood, brutality, lawlessness, ignorance, and 
 cruelty to the conquered Romans, were their spe- 
 cial sins ; while their special, and indeed only 
 virtue, was that indomitable daring which they 
 transmitted to their descendants for so many hun- 
 dred years. The buccaneers of the young world, 
 they were insensible to all influences save that of 
 superstition. They had become, under Clovis, or- 
 thodox Christians: but their conversion, to judge 
 from the notorious facts of history, worked 
 
THE POPES 'AND THE LOMBARDS. 30.9 
 
 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 aud brutality made them the more easily 
 the tools of the Roman clergy : 'Cette haute ve- 
 neration 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 controver- 
 sies, 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 enseigne- 
 ments moraux de la religion : ils fermerent les 
 yeux sur les violences, le meurtre, le dereglement 
 des mceurs ; ils autoriserent en quelque sorte pub- 
 liquement la poligamie, et ils precherent le droit 
 divin des rois et le devoir de l'obeissance pour 
 les peuples 1 .' 
 
 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 
 
 1 Sismondi, Hist, de la Chute de V Empire Romain, p. 187. 
 
310 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 centuries of confusion and bloodshed, have been 
 united into one great nation, stretching from 
 the Rhine to the Loire and the sea, and en- 
 croaching continually to the southward and east- 
 ward. 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 des- 
 tinies 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 Ro- 
 man and Greek civilization, and with them the 
 effete and semi-idolatrous Christianity of the Em- 
 pire. 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, 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 311 
 
 enervated by the luxurious climate of Spain, have 
 recoiled before the Mussulman invaders. Rode- 
 rick, 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 Visi- 
 goths and Sueves are crushed together into the 
 mountain fastnesses of Asturiasand 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 Nar- 
 bonne. The danger was imminent. There was no 
 reason why they should not attempt a third in- 
 vasion. Why should they not spread along the 
 shores of the Mediterranean, establishing them- 
 
312 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 selves there, as they were already doing in Sicily, 
 and menacing Rome from north as well as south? 
 To unite, therefore, the two great Catholic Teu- 
 tonic 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 Poman 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 Chris- 
 tendom a second time from the Mussulman in 737. 
 The Pope, one would think, should have remem- 
 bered 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." 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 313 
 
 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 Bp. 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 scrupu- 
 lous 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 Lom- 
 bard king Bachis to go into a monastery. Astulf 
 seizes the crown, and attacks Bavenna. The Pope 
 succeeding, Stephen III., opposes him ; and he 
 marches on Borne, threatening to assault it, un- 
 less 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 
 
314 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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 excommunica- 
 tion, 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 nego- 
 tiation : 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 lec- 
 ture commenced. 
 
 Astolf has marched down, as we heard, to the 
 walls of Pome, laying the land waste; cutting 
 
' THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 315 
 
 down the vines, carrying off consecrated vessels, 
 insulting the sacrament of the altar. The Lom- 
 bards 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 Ex- 
 archate, 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 pres- 
 sure of Franks and Romans, asked to be ' taken 
 into the service of St Peter,' and dipt their long 
 German locks after the Roman fashion. 
 
316 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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 evi- 
 dence was required to prove that they possessed 
 Rome, not as the vassals of the Prankish Kaisers, 
 or of any barbarian Teutons whatsoever; but in 
 their own right, as hereditary sovereigns of Rome. 
 And the documents, when needed, were forth- 
 coming. 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 bap- 
 tized, by Pope Sylvester; that he had, in grati- 
 tude 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 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 317 
 
 Constantinople, as a new seat of government for 
 the remnant of his empire. 
 
 This astounding falsehood was, of course, ac- 
 cepted 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 mo- 
 nasticism, 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 Lom- 
 bards were not a superstitious race ; they did 
 not, like the Franks and Anglo-Saxons, crowd 
 into monasteries. I can only find four instances 
 
318 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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, Bava- 
 rians, Sueves, Burgunds, consider it a sufficient 
 insult to call our enemy a Boman; comprehend- 
 ing in that one name of Boman, whatever is ig- 
 noble, cowardly, avaricious, luxurious, false, in 
 a word, every vice.' If this was — as it very pro- 
 bably was — the feeling of the whole Teutonic 
 race ; and if it was repaid — as it certainly was — 
 on the part of the Boman, by contempt for the 
 'barbarism' and 'ignorance' of the Teuton; what 
 must have been the feeling between Boman and 
 Lombard ? Contact must have embittered mutual 
 contempt into an utter and internecine hatred, in 
 which the Bope, as representative of the Boman 
 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, 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 319 
 
 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 Home 
 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 Christen- 
 dom 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 sanc- 
 tity attached to a particular spot ; and any power, 
 which, like the Lombard, tended to give Italy 
 another centre than Rome, they dreaded and dis- 
 
320 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 liked. That Lombard basilica, near Milan, with all 
 its treasures, must have been in their eyes, a formid- 
 able 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 Ste- 
 phen'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 Pavenna, 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 de- 
 fending 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 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 321 
 
 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 king- 
 dom ; 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 Boman relics, on the 
 fable that Borne was the patrimony of Peter, they 
 had built on a lie; and that lie avenged itself. 
 
 Had they been independent of the locality of 
 Borne ; 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 Bome itself 
 
 21 
 
322 THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 
 
 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, be- 
 hold, 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 
 
THE POPES AND THE LOMBARDS. 323 
 
 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. 
 
 21—2 
 
LECTURE XII. 
 
 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 I do not know whether any of you know much 
 of the theory of war. I know very little my- 
 self. Bat 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. 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 325 
 
 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 : 1 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 1 
 Latham, that we were always 'Markmen,' men of; 
 the Marches, occupying a narrow frontier between / 
 the Slavs and the Roman Empire; and that Taci- 
 tus 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. 
 
326 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 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 march- 
 ing over them; while too often two brigades quar- 
 relled 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. 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 827 
 
 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, Ra- 
 tisbon 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, 
 
328 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 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 opera- 
 tion.' 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 in- 
 vaders 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 ad- 
 vantages. It cannot be outflanked by the enemy; 
 and he dare not concentrate his forces on the fore- 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 329 
 
 most division, and beat the divisions in detail. 
 If lie tries to do so, lie is outflanked himself, 
 and he is liable to be beaten in detail by con- 
 tinually 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 be- 
 tween 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 
 
330 THE STRATEGY OP PROVIDENCE. 
 
 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 splen- 
 did 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 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 331 
 
 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, Mark- 
 men, 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, de- 
 serters, 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 ge- 
 nius planned them. He wanted Rome, as all Teutons 
 did. He was close to Italy, in the angle of which I 
 
332 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 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 de- 
 struction. 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 re- 
 tired 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 fear- 
 ful 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 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 333 
 
 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 Flo- 
 rence, 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 dis- 
 cipline 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, 
 
334 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 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 con- 
 quered 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; be- 
 tween 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 there- 
 fore of the interior lines of operation. They had 
 been forced into this position; but, like Romans, 
 they had accepted it. With the boundless com- 
 mon sense of the race (however fallen, debauch- 
 ed, 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 Con- 
 stantinople the boundless crops of Asia, Syria 
 and Egypt. 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 335 
 
 The strength of Constantinople was infinite — 
 commanding two seas and two continents. It is, 
 as the genius ofConstantinople saw — as the genius 
 of the Czar Nicholas saw — the strongest spot, per- 
 haps, in the world. That fact was what enabled 
 Justinian's Empire to arise again, and enabled 
 Belisarius and Narses to reconquer Africa and 
 Italy. Eemember 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 posi- 
 tion. It enabled the Eomans by rapid move- 
 ments of their fleets, to reconquer Africa and 
 Italy. It might have enabled them to do much 
 more. 
 
 Belisarius, with great wisdom, began by at- 
 tacking 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 
 
 v 
 
 C^&fct-^k 
 
 
336 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 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 Lom- 
 bards, besides Herules, and Huns, and Avars, 
 fight for him at Nuceria, and destroy the Ostro- 
 goths ; 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, 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 337 
 
 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 Yarangers 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 weak- 
 ened the Teutons ; and had, by harrying the 
 country, destroyed the Roman's power of obtain- 
 ing 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 excite- 
 ment 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 
 
 22 . 
 
338 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 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 them- 
 selves 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 ad. 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. 
 
THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 339 
 
 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 1 
 one mind to lead those innumerable armies, on ' 
 whose success depended the future of the whole i 
 human race ? Did no one marshal them in that j 
 impregnable convex front, from the Euxine to the 
 North Sea? No one guide them to the two great i 
 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 impos- 
 sible ; 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 gravi- / 
 tated 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 par- 
 ticular spot each grain of gold should be washed 
 down from an Australian quartz reef, that a cer- 
 tain man might find it at a certain moment and 
 crisis of his life ; — if I be superstitious enough, 
 
 •6 
 
 22— -2 
 
4 
 
 340 THE STRATEGY OF PROVIDENCE. 
 
 (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 ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
 Cambridge: printed at the university press. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 000233&5H7&