servants; and for seven centuries afterwards the whole kingdom of
Naples remained a fief of St. Peter,--won for him thus by a single
man, unarmed, against three thousand Norman knights, captained by
Robert Guiscard!

A day of deeds, gentlemen, to some purpose,--_that_ 18th of June,
anyhow.

Here, in the historical account of Norman character, I must
unwillingly stop for to-day--because, as you choose to spend your
University money in building ball-rooms instead of lecture-rooms, I
dare not keep you much longer in this black hole, with its nineteenth
century ventilation. I try your patience--and tax your breath--only
for a few minutes more in drawing the necessary corollaries respecting
Norman art.[21]

[Footnote 21: Given at much greater length in the lecture, with
diagrams from Iffley and Poictiers, without which the text of them
would be unintelligible. The sum of what I said was a strong assertion
of the incapacity of the Normans for any but the rudest and most
grotesque sculpture,--Poictiers being, on the contrary, examined and
praised as Gallic-French--not Norman.]

How far the existing British nation owes its military prowess to
the blood of Normandy and Anjou, I have never examined its genealogy
enough to tell you;--but this I can tell you positively, that whatever
constitutional order or personal valour the Normans enforced or taught
among the nations they conquered, they did not at first attempt with
their own hands to rival them in any of their finer arts, but used
both Greek and Saxon sculptors, either as slaves, or hired workmen,