to comb their short hair over their forehead, and
to content themselves with the ornament of two small whiskers."

37. Moustaches,--Mr. Gibbon means, I imagine: and I take leave also to
suppose that the nobles, and noble ladies, might wear such tress and
ringlet as became them. But again, we receive unexpectedly
embarrassing light on the democratic institutions of the Franks, in
being told that "the various trades, the labours of agriculture, and
the arts of hunting and fishing, were _exercised by servile_ hands for
the _emolument_ of the Sovereign."

'Servile' and 'Emolument,' however, though at first they sound very
dreadful and very wrong, are only Miltonic-Gibbonian expressions of
the general fact that the Frankish Kings had ploughmen in their
fields, employed weavers and smiths to make their robes and swords,
hunted with huntsmen, hawked with falconers, and were in other
respects tyrannical to the ordinary extent that an English Master of
Hounds may be. "The mansion of the long-haired Kings was surrounded
with convenient yards and stables for poultry and cattle; the garden
was planted with useful vegetables; the magazines filled with corn and
wine either for sale or consumption; and the whole administration
conducted by the strictest rules of private economy."

38. I have collected these imperfect, and not always extremely
consistent, notices of the aspect and temper of the Franks out of Mr.
Gibbon's casual references to them during a period of more than two
centuries,--and the last passage quoted, which he accompanies with the
statement that "one hundred and sixty of these rural palaces were
scattered through the provinces of their kingdom," without telling us
what kingdom, or at what period, must I think be held descriptive of the
general manner and system of their monarchy after the victories of
Clovis. But, from the first hour you hear of him, the Frank, closely
considered, is always an extremely ingenious, well meaning, and
industrious personage;--if eagerly acquisitive, also intelligently
conservative and constructive; an element of order and crystalline
edification, which is to consummate itself one day, in the aisles of
Amiens; and things generally insuperable and impregnable, if the
inhabitants of them had been as sound-hearted as their builders, for
many a day beyond.

39. But for the present, we must retrace our ground a little; for
indeed I have lately observed with compunction, in rereading some o