ed for before at the
University libraries. They made many people who read them afterwards,
take a new interest in old and half-forgotten kings and battles, and they
extorted even from unfriendly critics the admission that certain
chapters, such as, for instance, 'The Monk as a Civiliser,' displayed in
an unexpected way his power of appreciating the good points in
characters, otherwise most antipathic to the apostle of Manly
Christianity. They contain, in fact, the thoughts of a poet, a moralist,
a politician, a theologian, and, before all, of a friend and counsellor
of young men, while reading for them and with them one of the most awful
periods in the history of mankind, the agonies of a dying Empire and the
birth of new nationalities. History was but his text, his chief aim was
that of the teacher and preacher, and as an eloquent interpreter of the
purposes of history before an audience of young men to whom history is
but too often a mere succession of events to be learnt by heart, and to
be ready against periodical examinations, he achieved what he wished to
achieve. Historians by profession would naturally be incensed at some
portions of this book, but even they would probably admit by this time,
that there are in it whole chapters full of excellence, telling passages,
happy delineations, shrewd remarks, powerful outbreaks of real eloquence,
which could not possibly be consigned to oblivion.

Nor would it have been possible to attempt to introduce any alterations,
or to correct what may seem to be mistakes. The book is not meant as a
text-book or as an authority, any more than Schiller's History of the
Thirty Years' War; it should be read in future, as what it was meant to
be from the first, Kingsley's thoughts on some of the moral problems
presented by the conflict between the Roman and the Teuton. One cannot
help wishing that, instead of lectures, Kingsley had given us another
novel, like Hypatia, or a real historical tragedy, a Dietrich von Bern,
embodying in living characters one of the fiercest struggles of humanity,
the death of the Roman, the birth of the German world. Let me quote here
what Bunsen said of Kingsley's dramatic power many years ago:

'I do not hesitate (he writes) to call these two works, the _Saint's
Tragedy_ and _Hypatia_, by far the most important and perfect of this
genial writer. In these more particularly I find the justification of a
hope which I beg to be allowed to express--tha