[2-2] On inquiry, I find in the flat between Paris and Sèvres.
[2-3] See generally any description that Carlyle has had occasion to give of Prussian or Polish ground, or edge of Baltic shore.
[2-4] Gigantic—and not yet fossilized! See Gibbon's note on the death of Theodebert: "The King pointed his spear—the Bull overturned a tree on his head,—he died the same day."—vii. 255. The Horn of Uri and her shield, with the chiefly towering crests of the German helm, attest the terror of these Aurochs herds.
[2-5] Claudius, Aurelian, Probus, Constantius; and after the division of the empire, to the East, Justinian. "The emperor Justinian was born of an obscure race of Barbarians, the inhabitants of a wild and desolate country, to which the names of Dardania, of Dacia, and of Bulgaria have been successively applied. The names of these Dardanian peasants are Gothic, and almost English. Justinian is a translation of Uprauder (upright); his father, Sabatius,—in Græco-barbarous language, Stipes—was styled in his village 'Istock' (Stock)."—Gibbon, beginning of chap. xl. and note.
[2-6] Gibbon touches the facts more closely in a sentence of his 22nd chapter. "The independent warriors of Germany, who considered truth as the noblest of their virtues, and freedom as the most valuable of their possessions." He is speaking especially of the Frankish tribe of the Attuarii, against whom the Emperor Julian had to re-fortify the Rhine from Cleves to Basle: but the first letters of the Emperor Jovian, after Julian's death, "delegated the military command of Gaul and Illyrium (what a vast one it was, we shall see hereafter), to Malarich, a brave and faithful officer of the nation of the Franks;" and they remain the loyal allies of Rome in her last struggle with Alaric. Apparently for the sake only of an interesting variety of language,—and at all events without intimation of any causes of so great a change in the national character,—we find Mr. Gibbon in his next volume suddenly adopting the abusive epithets of Procopius, and calling the Franks "a light and perfidious nation" (vii. 251). The only traceable grounds for this unexpected description of them are that they refuse to be bribed either into friendship or activity, by Rome or Ravenna; and that in his invasion of Italy, the grandson of Clovis did not previously send exact warning of his proposed route, nor even entirely signify his intentions till he had secured the bridge of the Po at Pavia; afterwards declaring his mind with sufficient distinctness by "assaulting, almost at the same instant, the hostile camps of the Goths and Romans, who, instead of uniting their arms, fled with equal precipitation."
[2-7] For detailed illustration of the word, see 'Val d'Arno,' Lecture VIII.; 'Fors Clavigera,' Letters XLVI. 231, LXXVII. 137; and Chaucer, 'Romaunt of Rose,' 1212—"Next him" (the knight sibbe to Arthur) "daunced dame Franchise;"—the English lines are quoted and commented on in the first lecture of 'Ariadne Florentina'; I give the French here:—
"Apres tous ceulx estoit Franchise
Que ne fut ne brune ne bise.
Ains fut comme la neige blanche
Courtoyse estoit, joyeuse, et franche.
Le nez avoit long et tretis,
Yeulx vers, riants; sourcilz faitis;
Les cheveulx eut très-blons et longs
Simple fut comme les coulons
Le cœur eut doulx et debonnaire.
Elle n'osait dire ne faire
Nulle riens que faire ne deust."
And I hope my girl readers will never more confuse Franchise with 'Liberty.'
[2-8] Their first mischievous exsultation into Alsace being invited by the Romans themselves, (or at least by Constantius in his jealousy of Julian,)—with "presents and promises,—the hopes of spoil, and a perpetual grant of all the territories they were able to subdue." Gibbon, chap. xix. (3, 208.) By any other historian than Gibbon, who has really no fixed opinion on any character, or question, but, safe in the general truism that the worst men sometimes do right, and the best often do wrong, praises when he wants to round a sentence, and blames when he cannot otherwise edge one—it might have startled us to be here told of the nation which "deserved, assumed, and maintained the honourable name of freemen," that "these undisciplined robbers treated as their natural enemies all the subjects of the empire who possessed any property which they were desirous of acquiring." The first campaign of Julian, which throws both Franks and Alemanni back across the Rhine, but grants the Salian Franks, under solemn oath, their established territory in the Netherlands, must be traced at another time.
[2-9] Read Mr. Plimsoll's article on coal mines for instance.