to sell his peltry, how he himself was a gentleman now, and a
civilized man, and a Roman; and how he had followed Julius Caesar,
the king of men, over the Rubicon, and on to a city of the like of
which man never dreamed, wherein was room for all the gods of heaven?
Did no captive tribune of Varus' legions, led with horrid shouts
round Thor's altar in the Teutoburger Wald, ere his corpse was hung
among the horses and goats on the primaeval oaks, turn to bay like a
Roman, and tell his wild captors of the Eternal City, and of the
might of that Caesar who would avenge every hair upon his head with a
German life; and receive for answer a shout of laughter, and the cry-
-'You have come to us: and some day we will go to you?' Did no
commissary, bargaining with a German for cattle to be sent over the
frontier by such a day of the week, and teaching him to mistranslate
into those names of Thor, Woden, Freya, and so forth, which they now
carry, the Jewish-Assyrian-Roman days of the se'nnight, amuse the
simple forester by telling him how the streets of Rome were paved
with gold, and no one had anything to do there but to eat and bathe
at the public expense, and to go to the theatre, and see 20,000
gladiators fight at once? Did no German 'Regulus,' alderman, or
king, enter Rome on an embassy, and come back with uplifted eyes and
hands, declaring that he had seen things unspeakable--a 'very fine
plunder,' as Blucher said of London; and that if it were not for the
walls, they might get it all; for not only the ladies, but the
noblemen, went about in litters of silver and gold, and wore gauze
dresses, the shameless wretches, through which you might see every
limb, so that as for killing them, there was no more fear of them
than of a flock of sheep: but that he did not see as well as he
could have wished how to enter the great city, for he was more or
less the worse for liquor the whole time, with wondrous stuff which
they called wine? Or did no captive, escaped by miracle from the