e duties of civil
government." Even when his son-in-law, Alaric, fell by Clovis' hand in
the battle of Poitiers, Theodoric was content to check the Frank power
at Arles, without pursuing his success, and to protect his infant
grandchild, correcting at the same time some abuses in the civil
government of Spain. So that the healing sovereignty of the great Goth
was established from Sicily to the Danube--and from Sirmium to the
Atlantic ocean.

54. Thus, then, at the close of the fifth century, you have Europe
divided simply by her watershed; and two Christian kings reigning,
with entirely beneficent and healthy power--one in the north--one in
the south--the mightiest and worthiest of them married to the other's
youngest sister: a saint queen in the north--and a devoted and earnest
Catholic woman, queen mother in the south. It is a conjunction of
things memorable enough in the Earth's history,--much to be thought
of, O fast whirling reader, if ever, out of the crowd of pent up
cattle driven across Rhine, or Adige, you can extricate yourself for
an hour, to walk peacefully out of the south gate of Cologne, or
across Fra Giocondo's bridge at Verona--and so pausing look through
the clear air across the battlefield of Tolbiac to the blue
Drachenfels, or across the plain of St. Ambrogio to the mountains of
Garda. For there were fought--if you will think closely--the two
victor-battles of the Christian world. Constantine's only gave changed
form and dying colour to the falling walls of Rome; but the Frank and
Gothic races, thus conquering and thus ruled, founded the arts and
established the laws which gave to all future Europe her joy, and her
virtue. And it is lovely to see how, even thus early, the Feudal
chivalry depended for its life on the nobleness of its womanhood.
There was no _vision_ seen, or alleged, at Tolbiac. The King prayed
simply to the God of Clotilde. On the morning of the battle of Verona,
Theodoric visited the tent of his mother and his sister,
"and requested that on the most illustrious festival of his life, they
would adorn him with the rich garments which they had worked with
their own hands."

55. But over Clovis, there was extended yet another influence--greater
than his queen's. When his kingdom was first extended to the Loire,
the shepherdess of Nanterre was already aged,--no torch-bearing maid
of battle, like Clotilde, no knightly leader of deliverance like
Jeanne, but grey in meekness of wisdom, a