ill nobler type of
man, and one to whom the world owes more, though his eye, too, was not
always single, nor his hands clean.

As for selfishness, one must really bear in mind that men who walked away
into that doleful 'urwarld' had need to pray very literally 'that Christ
would guide their feet into the way of peace;' and must have cared as
much for their wordly interests as those who march up to the cannon's
mouth. Their lives in that forest were not worth twenty-four hours'
purchase, and they knew it. It is an ugly thing for an unarmed man,
without a compass, to traverse the bush of Australia or New Zealand,
where there are no wild beasts. But it was uglier still to start out
under the dark roof of that primaeval wood. Knights, when they rode it,
went armed cap-a-pie, like Sintram through the dark valley, trusting in
God and their good sword. Chapmen and merchants stole through it by a
few tracks in great companies, armed with bill and bow. Peasants
ventured into it a few miles, to cut timber, and find pannage for their
swine, and whispered wild legends of the ugly things therein--and
sometimes, too, never came home. Away it stretched from the fair
Rhineland, wave after wave of oak and alder, beech and pine, God alone
knew how far, into the land of night and wonder, and the infinite
unknown; full of elk and bison, bear and wolf, lynx and glutton, and
perhaps of worse beasts still. Worse beasts, certainly, Sturmi and his
comrades would have met, if they had met them in human form. For there
were waifs and strays of barbarism there, uglier far than any waif and
stray of civilization, border ruffian of the far west, buccaneer of the
Tropic keys, Cimaroon of the Panama forests; men verbiesterte, turned
into the likeness of beasts, wildfanger, huner, ogres, wehr-wolves,
strong thieves and outlaws, many of them possibly mere brutal maniacs;
naked, living in caves and coverts, knowing no law but their own hunger,
rage, and lust; feeding often on human flesh; and woe to the woman or
child or unarmed man who fell into their ruthless clutch. Orson, and
such like human brutes of the wilderness, serve now to amuse children in
fairy tales; they were then ugly facts of flesh and blood. There were
heathens there, too, in small colonies: heathen Saxons, cruelest of all
the tribes; who worshipped at the Irmensul, and had an old blood-feud
against the Franks; heathen Thuringer, who had murdered St. Kilian the
Irishman at Wu