you will find all I think necessary to say, in the part called _Valle
Crucis_ of 'Our Fathers have told us.' But I must here warn you, with
reference to it, of one gravely false prejudice of Montalembert. He is
entirely blind to the conditions of Roman virtue, which existed in the
midst of the corruptions of the Empire, forming the characters of such
Emperors as Pertinax, Carus, Probus, the second Claudius, Aurelian,
and our own Constantius; and he denies, with abusive violence, the
power for good, of Roman Law, over the Gauls and Britons.

Respecting Roman national character, I will simply beg you to
remember, that both St. Benedict and St. Gregory are Roman patricians,
before they are either monk or pope; respecting its influence on
Britain, I think you may rest content with Shakespeare's estimate of
it. Both Lear and Cymbeline belong to this time, so difficult to our
apprehension, when the Briton accepted both Roman laws and Roman gods.
There is indeed the born Kentish gentleman's protest against them in
Kent's--

"Now, by Apollo, king,
Thou swear'st thy gods in vain";

but both Cordelia and Imogen are just as thoroughly Roman ladies, as
Virgilia or Calphurnia.

Of British Christianity and the Arthurian Legends, I shall have a word
or two to say in my lecture on "Fancy," in connection with the similar
romance which surrounds Theodoric and Charlemagne: only the worst of
it is, that while both Dietrich and Karl are themselves more wonderful
than the legends of them, Arthur fades into intangible vision:--this
much, however, remains to this day, of Arthurian blood in us, that