of just and terrible retribution you must wait
till the next lecture.

And now, to refresh us with a gleam of wholesome humanity after all these
horrors, let us turn to our worthy West Goth cousins for a while. They
have stopt cutting each other's throats, settled themselves in North
Spain and South France, and good bishop Sidonius gets to like them. They
are just and honest men on the whole, kindly, and respectable in morals,
living according to their strange old Gothic Law. But above all Sidonius
likes their king--Theodoric is his name. A man of blood he has been in
his youth: but he has settled down, like his people; and here is a
picture of him. A real photograph of a live old Goth, nearly 1400 years
ago. Gibbon gives a good translation of it. I will give you one, but
Sidonius is prolix and florid, and I have had to condense.

A middle-sized, stout man, of great breadth of chest, and thickness of
limb, a large hand, and a small foot, curly haired, bushy eye-browed,
with remarkably large eyes and eyelids, hook-nosed, thin-lipped;
brilliant, cheerful, impassioned, full of health and strength in mind and
body. He goes to chapel before day-light, sits till eight doing justice,
while the crowd, let into a latticed enclosure, is admitted one by one
behind a curtain into the presence. At eight he leaves the throne, and
goes either to count his money, or look at his horses. If he hunts, he
thinks it undignified to carry his bow, and womanish to keep it strung, a
boy carries it behind him; and when game gets up, he asks you (or the
Bishop, who seems to have gone hunting with him) what you would wish him
to aim at; strings his bow, and then (says Sidonius) never misses his
shot. He dines at noon, quietly in general, magnificently on Saturdays;
drinks very little, and instead of sleeping after dinner, plays at tables
and dice. He is passionately fond of his game, but never loses his
temper, joking and talking to the dice, and to every one round him,
throwing aside royal severity, and bidding all be merry (says the
bishop); for, to speak my mind, what he is afraid of is, that people
should be afraid of him. If he wins he is in immense good humour; then
is the time to ask favours of him; and, says the crafty bishop, many a
time have I lost the game, and won my cause thereby. At three begins
again the toil of state. The knockers return, and those who shove them
away return too; everywhere the litigious crowd murmur