The Roman and the Teuton A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge
- Pages
- about 338
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 6.2 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
I wish in this first lecture to give you some general conception of 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.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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