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 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.

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 adventurous clamber in. Some, too, the Trolls steal and carry