purposes of history before an audience of young men to whom history
is but too often a mere succession of events to be learnt by heart,
and to be ready against periodical examinations, he achieved what he
wished to achieve. Historians by profession would naturally be
incensed at some portions of this book, but even they would probably
admit by this time, that there are in it whole chapters full of
excellence, telling passages, happy delineations, shrewd remarks,
powerful outbreaks of real eloquence, which could not possibly be
consigned to oblivion.

Nor would it have been possible to attempt to introduce any
alterations, or to correct what may seem to be mistakes. The book is
not meant as a text-book or as an authority, any more than Schiller's
History of the Thirty Years' War; it should be read in future, as
what it was meant to be from the first, Kingsley's thoughts on some
of the moral problems presented by the conflict between the Roman and
the Teuton. One cannot help wishing that, instead of lectures,
Kingsley had given us another novel, like Hypatia, or a real
historical tragedy, a Dietrich von Bern, embodying in living
characters one of the fiercest struggles of humanity, the death of
the Roman, the birth of the German world. Let me quote here what
Bunsen said of Kingsley's dramatic power many years ago:

'I do not hesitate (he writes) to call these two works, the Saint's
Tragedy and Hypatia, by far the most important and perfect of this
genial writer. In these more particularly I find the justification
of a hope which I beg to be allowed to express--that Kingsley might
continue Shakspeare's historical plays. I have for several years
made no secret of it, that Kingsley seems to me the genius of our
century, called to place by the side of that sublime dramatic series