gorges, or shallowly meandering the meads.
It is watering Farmer Balbus's fields; Grazier Ahenobarbus's
cows drink at it; idle Dolabell angles in its quiet reaches:
there are bloody tribal affrays yearly at its fords. It is
important, certainly, to Babbus and Dolabella, and the men slain
in the forays;--but to us others--.

And then at 390 there are falls and dangerous rapids; you will
get no ships beyond these. The Gauls poured down and swept away
everything: the records were burnt; and Rome, such as it was,
had to be re-founded. Here is a main break with the past;
something like Ts'in Shi Hwangti's Book-burning; and it serves
to make doubly uncertain all that went before. Go further now,
and you must take to the wild unmapped hills. There are no
fields beyond this; the kine keep to the lush lowland meadows;
rod and line must be left behind,--and angler too, unles he is
prepared for stiff climbing, and no marketable recompense. Nor
yet, perhaps, for some time, much in things unmarketable: I will
not say there is any great beauty of scenery in these rather
stubborn and arid hills.

As to the fourth century, then (or from 280 to 390)--we need not
care much which of Ahenobarbus's cows was brindled, or which had
the crumpled horn, or which broke off the coltsfoot bloom with
lazy ruthless hoof. As to the fifth,--we need not try to row the
quinqueremes of history beyond that Gaulish waterfall. We need
not bother with the weight Dolabella claims for the trout he says
he caught up there: that trout has been cooked and eaten these
twenty-three hundred years. Away beyond, in the high mountains,
there may be pools haunted by the nymphs; you cannot sail up to
them, that is certain; but there may be ways round.....

Here, still in the foot-hills, is a pool that does look, if not
_nymphatic,_ at least a little fishy, as they say; the story
of Rome's dealings with Lars Porsenna. It even looks as if
something historical might be caught in it. The Roman historians
have been obviously camouflaging: they do not want you to
examine this too closely. Remember that all these things came
down by memory, among a people exceedingly proud, and that had
been used to rely on records,--which records had been burnt by
the Gauls. Turn to your English History, and you shall probably
look in vain in it for any reference to the Battle of Patay; you
shall certainly find Agincourt noised and trumpted _ad lib._ Now
battles are neve