in his village 'Istock' (Stock)."--Gibbon, beginning
of chap. xl. and note.]

16. The _truth_, and the fire, of the Frank,--I must repeat with
insistence,--for my younger readers have probably been in the habit of
thinking that the French were more polite than true. They will find,
if they examine into the matter, that only Truth _can_ be polished:
and that all we recognize of beautiful, subtle, or constructive, in
the manners, the language, or the architecture of the French, comes of
a pure veracity in their nature, which you will soon feel in the
living creatures themselves if you love them: if you understand even
their worst rightly, their very Revolution was a revolt against lies;
and against the betrayal of Love. No people had ever been so loyal in
vain.

17. That they were originally Germans, they themselves I suppose would
now gladly forget; but how they shook the dust of Germany off their
feet--and gave themselves a new name--is the first of the phenomena
which we have now attentively to observe respecting them.

"The most rational critics," says Mr. Gibbon in his tenth chapter,
"_suppose_ that _about_ the year 240" (_suppose_ then, we, for our
greater comfort, say _about_ the year 250, half-way to end of fifth
century, where we are,--ten years less or more, in cases of 'supposing
about,' do not much matter, but some floating buoy of a date will be
handy here.)

'About' A.D. 250, then, "a new confederacy was formed, under the name
of Franks, by the old inhabitants of the lower Rhine and the Weser."

18. My own impression, concerning the old inhabitants of the lower
Rhine and the Weser, would have been that they consisted mostly of
fish, with superficial frogs and ducks; but Mr. Gibbon's note on the
passage informs us that the new confederation composed itself of human
creatures, in these items following.

1. The Chauci, who lived we are not told where.

2. The Sicambri " in the Principality of Waldeck.

3. The Attuarii " in the Duchy of Berg.

4. The Bructeri " on the banks of the Lippe.

5. The Chamavii " in the country of the Bructeri.

6. The Catti " in Hessia.

All this I believe you will be rather easier in your minds if you
forget than if you remember; but if it please you to read, or re-read,
(or best of all, get read to you by some real Miss Isabella Wardour,)
the story of Martin Waldeck in the 'Antiquary,' you will gain from it
a sufficient notion of