y first lecture, 'What would become of the forest children,
unless some kind saint or hermit took pity on them?'

I used the words saint and hermit with a special purpose. It was by the
influence, actual or imaginary, of such, that the Teutons, after the
destruction of the Roman empire, were saved from becoming hordes of
savages, destroying each other by continual warfare.

What our race owes, for good and for evil, to the Roman clergy, I shall
now try to set before you.

To mete out to them their due share of praise and blame is, I confess, a
very difficult task. It can only be fulfilled by putting oneself, as far
as possible, in their place, and making human allowance for the
circumstances, utterly novel and unexpected, in which they found
themselves during the Teutonic invasions. Thus, perhaps, we may find it
true of some of them, as of others, that 'Wisdom is justified of all her
children.'

That is a hard saying for human nature. Justified of her children she
may be, after we have settled which are to be her children and which not:
but of all her children? That is a hard saying. And yet was not every
man from the beginning of the world, who tried with his whole soul to be
right, and to do good, a child of wisdom, of whom she at least will be
justified, whether he is justified or not? He may have had his
ignorances, follies, weaknesses, possibly crimes: but he served the
purpose of his mighty mother. He did, even by his follies, just what she
wanted done; and she is justified of all her children.

This may sound like optimism: but it also sounds like truth to any one
who has fairly studied that fantastic page of history, the contrast
between the old monks and our own heathen forefathers. The more one
studies the facts, the less one is inclined to ask, 'Why was it not done
better?'--the more inclined to ask, 'Could it have been done better?'
Were not the celibate clergy, from the fifth to the eighth centuries,
exceptional agents fitted for an exceptional time, and set to do a work
which in the then state of the European races, none else could have done?
At least, so one suspects, after experience of their chronicles and
legends, sufficient to make one thoroughly detest the evil which was in
their system: but sufficient also to make one thoroughly love many of the
men themselves.

A few desultory sketches, some carefully historical, the rest as
carefully compiled from common facts, may serve best to ill