pride in the second Romulus of his country as to have known all
about his family relations. The error is only comparable to the
extreme case of an Englishman being supposed to take such very
little interest in Queen Victoria as to mistake her for a daughter
of William IV.

VIII. To be called upon to believe that these blunders could have
been committed by Tacitus, is to ask one to believe that he, who
made no such mistakes in his History, ceased to write like a Roman
when composing the Annals. It is truly writing, not like an
ancient Roman, but a modern European, when in the first book of
the Annals Germanicus is represented consulting whether he will
take a short and well known road, or one untried and difficult,
though the reason is, that by going the longer, he would go the
unguarded way, and really do things quicker: "consultatque, ex
duobus itineribus breve et solitum sequatur, an impeditius et
intentatum, eoque hostibus incautum. Delecta longiore via, cetera
adcelerantur" (I. 50). Were it not for this passage, one would
have thought that, in the days of Tiberius, Germany was almost as
bare of roads as the present interior of Arabia and Chinese
Tartary; and that each tribe in that enormous wilderness of wood
and morass was approached, as the present people of Dahomey,
Ashantee and Timbucto, by a single path; and that it was only,
after the lapse of centuries, when, in the due course of things,
Germany had assumed a more civilised character, that there were
two, three, or more roads; so that we can quite understand it
being said of the Bavarian general, John de Werth, in the
seventeenth century, that he did this,--march out of the direct
way, which was watched, by another road, which was longer because
it was unguarded: thus pouncing on the enemy by night, and taking