man unto this day,
they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and were driven
out of the paradise of unconsciousness; had to begin again sadder and
wiser men, and eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; and so to
rise, after their fall, into a nobler, wiser, more artificial, and
therefore more truly human and divine life, than that from which they had
at first fallen, when they left their German wilds.

One does not, of course, mean the parallel to fit in all details. The
fall of the Teuton from the noble simplicity in which Tacitus beheld and
honoured him, was a work of four centuries; perhaps it was going on in
Tacitus' own time. But the culminating point was the century which saw
Italy conquered, and Rome sacked, by Visigoth, by Ostrogoth, by Vandal,
till nothing was left save fever-haunted ruins. Then the ignorant and
greedy child, who had been grasping so long after the fair apples of
Sodom, clutched them once and for all, and found them turn to ashes in
his hands.

Yes--it is thus that I wish you to look at the Invasion of the
Barbarians, Immigration of the Teutons, or whatsoever name you may call
it. Before looking at questions of migration, of ethnology, of laws, and
of classes, look first at the thing itself; and see with sacred pity--and
awe, one of the saddest and grandest tragedies ever performed on earth.
Poor souls! And they were so simple withal. One pities them, as one
pities a child who steals apples, and makes himself sick with them after
all. It is not the enormous loss of life which is to me the most tragic
part of the story; it is that very simplicity of the Teutons. Bloodshed
is a bad thing, certainly; but after all nature is prodigal of human
life--killing her twenty thousand and her fifty thousand by a single
earthquake; and as for death in battle--I sometimes am tempted to think,
having sat by many death beds, that our old forefathers may have been
right, and that death in battle may be a not unenviable method of passing
out of this troublesome world. Besides, we have no right to blame those
old Teutons, while we are killing every year more of her Majesty's
subjects by preventible disease, than ever they killed in their bloodiest
battle. Let us think of that, and mend that, ere we blame the old German
heroes. No, there are more pitiful tragedies than any battlefield can
shew; and first among them, surely, is the disappointment of young hopes,
the degradation of youn