A SERIES OF LECTURES delivered before THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE by CHARLES KINGSLEY, M.A. new edition , with preface , by PROFESSOR F. MAX MÜLLER London MACMILLAN AND CO. 1889 [ All rights reserved ] OXFORD: horace hart , printer to the university . DEDICATED to The Gentlemen of the University who did me the honour to attend these lectures . Contents Preface by Professor F.  Max Müller    The Forest Children    The Dying Empire    Preface to Lecture III    The Human Deluge    The Gothic Civili

Never shall I forget the moment when for the last time I gazed upon the manly features of Charles Kingsley, features which Death had rendered calm, grand, sublime.  The constant struggle that in life seemed to allow no rest to his expression, the spirit, like a caged lion, shaking the bars of his prison, the mind striving for utterance, the soul wearying for loving response,—all that was over.  There remained only the satisfied expression of triumph and peace, as of a soldier who had fought a go

I wish in this first lecture to give you some general conception of the causes which urged our Teutonic race to attack and destroy Rome.  I shall take for this one lecture no special text-book: but suppose you all to be acquainted with the Germania of Tacitus, and with the 9th Chapter of Gibbon.  And I shall begin, if you will allow me, by a parable, a myth, a saga, such as the men of whom I am going to tell you loved; and if it seem to any of you childish, bear in mind that what is childish nee

It is not for me to trace the rise, or even the fall of the Roman Empire.  That would be the duty rather of a professor of ancient history, than of modern.  All I need do is to sketch, as shortly as I can, the state in which the young world found the old, when it came in contact with it. The Roman Empire, toward the latter part of the fourth century, was in much the same condition as the Chinese or the Turkish Empire in our own days.  Private morality (as Juvenal and Persius will tell you), had

If I have followed in these lectures the better known and more widely received etymology of the name Goth, I have done so out of no disrespect to Dr. Latham; but simply because his theory seems to me adhuc sub judice.  It is this, as far as I understand it.  That ‘Goth’ was not the aboriginal name of the race.  That they were probably not so called till they came into the land of the Getæ, about the mouths of the Danube.  That the Teutonic name for the Ostrogoths was Grutungs, and that of the Vi

‘I have taken in hand,’ said Sir Francis Drake once to the crew of the immortal Pelican, ‘that which I know not how to accomplish.  Yea, it hath even bereaved me of my wits to think of it.’ And so I must say on the subject of this lecture.  I wish to give you some notion of the history of Italy for nearly one hundred years; say from 400 to 500.  But it is very difficult.  How can a man draw a picture of that which has no shape; or tell the order of absolute disorder?  It is all a horrible ‘fourm

Let us follow the fortunes of Italy and of Rome.  They are not only a type of the fortunes of the whole western world, but the fortunes of that world, as you will see, depend on Rome. You must recollect, meanwhile, that by the middle of the fifth century, the Western Empire had ceased to exist.  The Angles and Saxons were fighting their way into Britain.  The Franks were settled in north France and the lower Rhineland.  South of them, the centre of Gaul still remained Roman, governed by Counts o

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 Philosophiæ 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

Of this truly dreadful Gothic war I can give you but a hasty sketch; of some of the most important figures in it, not even a sketch.  I cannot conceive to myself, and therefore cannot draw for you, the famous Belisarius.  Was he really the strange compound of strength and weakness which Procopius, and after him Gibbon, represent him?—a caricature, for good and evil, of our own famous Marlborough?  You must read and judge for yourselves.  I cannot, at least as yet, offer you any solution of the e

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;

I asked in my first lecture, ‘What would become of the forest children, unless some kind saint or hermit took pity on them?’ I used the words saint and hermit with a special purpose.  It was by the influence, actual or imaginary, of such, that the Teutons, after the destruction of the Roman empire, were saved from becoming hordes of savages, destroying each other by continual warfare. What our race owes, for good and for evil, to the Roman clergy, I shall now try to set before you. To mete out t

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

I have tried to shew you how the Teutonic nations were Christianized.  I have tried to explain to you why the clergy who converted them were, nevertheless, more or less permanently antagonistic to them.  I shall have, hereafter, to tell you something of one of the most famous instances of that antagonism: of the destruction of the liberties of the Lombards by that Latin clergy.  But at first you ought to know something of the manners of these Lombards; and that you may learn best by studying the

‘Our Lady the Mother of God, even Virgin Maria, together with us, protests to you, adjuring you with great obligations, and admonishes and commands you, and with her the thrones, dominations, all the heavenly angels, the martyrs and confessors of Christ, on behalf of the Roman city, committed to us by the Lord God, and the sheep of the Lord dwelling in it.  Defend and free it speedily from the hands of the persecuting Lombards, lest my body which suffered torments for Christ, and my home in whic

I no not know whether any of you know much of the theory of war.  I know very little myself.  But something of it one is bound to know, as Professor of History.  For, unfortunately, a large portion of the history of mankind is the history of war; and the historian, as a man who wants to know how things were done—as distinct from the philosopher, the man who wants to know how things ought to have been done—ought to know a little of the first of human arts—the art of killing.  What little I know t

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 improveme