15. The main mass of this innocent and invincible peasant life is, as I have above told you, grouped in the fruitful and temperate districts of (relatively) mountainous Europe,—reaching, west to east, from the Cornish Land's End to the mouth of the Danube. Already, in the times we are now dealing with, it was full of native passion—generosity—and intelligence capable of all things. Dacia gave to Rome the four last of her great Emperors, [2-5]—Britain to Christianity the first deeds, and the final legends, of her [Pg 33] chivalry,—Germany, to all manhood, the truth and the fire of the Frank,—Gaul, to all womanhood, the patience and strength of St. Genevieve.
16. The truth, and the fire, of the Frank,—I must repeat with insistence,—for my younger readers have probably been in the habit of thinking that the French were more polite than true. They will find, if they examine into the matter, that only Truth can be polished: and that all we recognize of beautiful, subtle, or constructive, in the manners, the language, or the architecture of the French, comes of a pure veracity in their nature, which you will soon feel in the living creatures themselves if you love them: if you understand even their worst rightly, their very Revolution was a revolt against lies; and against the betrayal of Love. No people had ever been so loyal in vain.
17. That they were originally Germans, they themselves I suppose would now gladly forget; but how they shook the dust of Germany off their feet—and gave themselves a new name—is the first of the phenomena which we have now attentively to observe respecting them.
"The most rational critics," says Mr. Gibbon in his tenth chapter, "suppose that about the year 240" (suppose then, we, for our greater comfort, say about the year 250, half-way to end of fifth century, where we are,—ten years less or more, in cases of 'supposing about,' do not much matter, but some floating buoy of a date will be handy here.)
'About' A.D. 250, then, "a new confederacy was formed, under the name of Franks, by the old inhabitants of the lower Rhine and the Weser."
18. My own impression, concerning the old inhabitants of the lower Rhine and the Weser, would have been that they consisted mostly of fish, with superficial frogs and ducks; but Mr. Gibbon's note on the passage informs us that the new confederation composed itself of human creatures, in these items following.
1. The Chauci, who lived we are not told where.
2. The Sicambri who lived in the Principality of Waldeck.