as to this point. He has now informed us that Charlemagne
did come of this Gallo-Roman family.]

[Footnote 4: _Paris_, p. 93.]

[Footnote 5: _Paris_, p. 226.]

[Footnote 6: _Ib._, p. 227.]

[Footnote 7: The Italian historian, Guglielmo Ferrero, of whom Mr.
Belloc, however, has no very high opinion, betrays some similar ideas in
writing of the importance of Gaul in the Empire.]

CHAPTER IX

THE HISTORICAL WRITER

In an essay in _First and Last_, Mr. Belloc says:

... That earthwork is the earthwork where the British stood against
the charge of the Tenth Legion, and first heard, sounding on their
bronze, the arms of Caesar. Here the river was forded; here the
little men of the South went up in formation; here the barbarian
broke and took his way, as the opposing General has recorded,
through devious woodland paths, scattering in the pursuit; here
began the great history of England.

Is it not an enormous business merely to stand in such a place? I
think so.

There you have compactly and poignantly expressed a mood which is common
to all men who have any feeling for the past. It is a pathetic, almost a
tragic mood, a longing more pitiable than that of any fanatic for any
paradise, any lover for any woman, because it is quite impossible that
it should ever be satisfied. To see, to feel, to move among the
foundations of our generation--it is so natural a desire, and it is
quite hopeless.

It is a desire which one might naturally suppose to be common among
historians, and to govern their thoughts: but you will not find it in
the academies. Only in the true historian, the student who, like
Herodotus, is also a poet and names the Muses, will you find its clear
expression. But it is and must be the mainspring of all good historical
writing, for this desire to know the concrete past is, in the end, the
only corrective to the propagandist bias, which is, as we have seen, the
right motive of useful research. Acton had it not, Froude perhaps a
little, Maitland, one might believe, to some extent,[8] Professor Bury,
Lord knows, neither that nor any other emotion comprehensible in man. To
the don, indeed, the absence of the past is one of the factors in his
fascinating, esoteric game: were some astounding document to appear that
should make the origin and constitution of the mediaeval manor as clear
as daylight, the problem would lose its interest, the agile don would