ly and military organizations in this world, down to our
own day; and, (unless perchance it be the Afghans and Zulus who are
stealing our lands in England--instead of we theirs, in their several
countries.) But concerning the _manner_ of this piece of military
execution, I must for the present leave the reader to consider with
himself, whether indeed it be less Kingly, or more savage, to strike
an uncivil soldier on the head with one's own battle-axe, than, for
instance, to strike a person like Sir Thomas More on the neck with an
executioner's,--using for the mechanism, and as it were guillotine bar
and rope to the blow--the manageable forms of National Law, and the
gracefully twined intervention of a polite group of noblemen and
bishops.

44. Far darker things have to be told of him than this, as his proud
life draws towards the close,--things which, if any of us could see
clear _through_ darkness, you should be told in all the truth of them.
But we never can know the truth of Sin; for its nature is to deceive
alike on the one side the Sinner, on the other the Judge.
Diabolic--betraying whether we yield to it, or condemn: Here is
Gibbon's sneer--if you care for it; but I gather first from the
confused paragraphs which conduct to it, the sentences of praise, less
niggard than the Sage of Lausanne usually grants to any hero who has
confessed the influence of Christianity.

45. "Clovis, when he was no more than fifteen years of age, succeeded,
by his father's death, to the command of the Salian tribe. The narrow
limits of his kingdom were confined to the island of the Batavians,
with the ancient dioceses of Tournay and Arras; and at the baptism of
Clovis, the number of his warriors could not exceed five thousand. The
kindred tribes of the Franks who had seated themselves along the
Scheldt, the Meuse, the Moselle, and the Rhine, were governed by their
independent kings, of the Merovingian race, the equals, the allies,
and sometimes the enemies of the Salic Prince. When he first took the
field he had neither gold nor silver in his coffers, nor wine and corn
in his magazines; but he imitated the example of Caesar, who in the
same country had acquired wealth by the sword, and purchased soldiers
with the fruits of conquest. The untamed spirit of the Barbarians was
taught to acknowledge the advantages of regular discipline. At the
annual review of the month of March, their arms were diligently
inspected; and when they travers