with them out of the wilderness, believed it likewise, and trembled. It paralysed the wisest, as well as the fiercest, that belief. Instead of disgusting the kings of the earth, it gave them over, bound hand and foot by their own guilty consciences, into the dominion of the clergy; and the belief that Charles Martel was damned, only knit (as M. Sismondi well remarks) his descendants the Carlovingians more closely to the Church which possest so terrible a weapon.

Whether they were right or wrong in these beliefs is a question not to be discussed in this chair. My duty is only to point out to you the universal existence of those beliefs, and the historic fact that they gave the clergy a character supernatural, magical, divine, with a reserve of power before which all trembled, from the beggar to the king; and also, that all struggles between the temporal and spiritual powers, like that between Henry and Becket, can only be seen justly in the light of the practical meaning of that excommunication which Becket so freely employed. I must also point out to you that so enormous a power (too great for the shoulders of mortal man) was certain to be, and actually was, fearfully abused, not only by its direct exercise, but also by bargaining with men, through indulgences and otherwise, for the remission of that punishment, which the clergy could, if they would, inflict; and worst of all, that out of the whole theory sprang up that system of persecution, in which the worst cruelties of heathen Rome were imitated by Christian priests, on the seemingly irrefragable ground that it was merciful to

offenders to save them, or, if not, at least to save others through them, by making them feel for a few hours in this world what they would feel for endless ages in the next.

LECTURE IX.

THE MONK A CIVILIZER.

HISTORIANS are often blamed for writing as if the History of Kings and Princes were the whole history of the world. 'Why do you tell us,' is said, ‘of nothing but the marriages, successions, wars, characters, of a few Royal Races? We want to know what the people, and not the princes, were like. History ought to be the history of the masses, and not of kings.'

The only answer to this complaint seems to be, that the defect is unavoidable. The history of the masses cannot be written, while they have no history; and none will they have, as long as they remain a mass; ere their history begins, individuals, few at first, and more and more numerous as they progress, must rise out of the mass, and become persons, with fixed ideas, determination, conscience, more or less different from their fellows, and thereby leavening and elevating their fellows, that they too may become persons, and men indeed. Then they will begin to have a common history, issuing out of each man's struggle to assert his own personality and his own convictions. Till that point is reached, the history of the masses will

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be mere statistic concerning their physical well-being or ill-being, which (for the early ages of our race) is unwritten, and therefore undiscoverable.

The early history of the Teutonic race, therefore, is, and must always remain, simply the history of a few great figures. Of the many of the masses, nothing is said; because there was nothing to say. They all ate, drank, married, tilled, fought, and died, not altogether brutally, we will hope, but still in a dull monotony, unbroken by any struggle of principles or ideas. We know that large masses of human beings have so lived in every age, and are living so nowthe Tartar hordes, for instance, or the thriving negroes of central Africa: comfortable folk, getting a tolerable living, son after father, for many generations, but certainly not developed enough, or afflicted enough, to have any history.

I believe that the masses, during the early middle age, were very well off; quite as well off as they deserved; that is, earned for themselves. They lived in a rough way, certainly but roughness is not discomfort, where the taste has not been educated. A Red Indian sleeps as well in a wigwam as we in a spring bed; and the Irish babies thrive as well among the peat ashes as on a Brussels carpet. Man is a very well constructed being, and can live and multiply anywhere, provided he can keep warm, and get pure water and enough to eat. Indeed, our Teutonic fathers must have been comfortably off, or they could not have multiplied as they did. Even though their numbers may have been. overstated, the fact is patent, that howsoever they

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were slaughtered down, by the Romans or by each other, they rose again as out of the soil, more numerous than ever. Again and again you read of a tribe being all but exterminated by the Romans, and in a few years find it bursting over the Pfalzgrab or the Danube, more numerous and terrible than before. Never believe that a people deprest by cold, illfeeding, and ill-training, could have conquered Europe in the face of centuries of destructive war. very wars, again, may have helped in the long run the increase of population, and for a reason simple enough, though often overlooked. War throws land. out of cultivation; and when peace returns, the new settlers find the land fallow, and more or less restored to its original fertility; and so begins a period of rapid and prosperous increase. In no other way can I explain the rate at which nations after the most desolating wars spring up, young and strong again, like the phoenix, from their own funeral pile. They begin afresh as the tillers of a virgin soil, fattened too often with the ashes of burnt homesteads, and the blood of the slain.

Another element of comfort may have been the fact, that in the rough education of the forest, only the strong and healthy children lived, while the weakly died off young, and so the labour-market, as we should say now, was never overstocked. This is the case with our own gipsies, and with many savage tribes the Red Indians, for instance-and accounts for their general healthiness: the unhealthy being all dead, in the first struggle for existence. But then