Although the other sources of the earliest history, the old lays, may not also have been tampered with, they are nevertheless altogether insufficient. We have a parallel case to this in our own Nibelungenlied, the poets of which likewise did not wish to deceive, nor did they make any pretensions whatever to be annalists. Historical characters appear in it,--Theodoric, Attila, the Burgundians; and yet of the whole poem nothing belongs to history. Nor has history any part in Romulus and Numa. They belong to the cycle of the gods, Romulus as the son of Mars, and Numa as the husband of Egeria; Romulus is merely a personification of Rome. Other poems have more historical matter in them; for instance, the Spanish romances of the Cid. Here the outlines are undoubtedly historical; but they form as it were a line only, whilst the description as given in the poem is a plane. There is also much of this in Roman history. He who utterly rejects the whole of the early Roman history, does not know what he is saying. Romulus and Numa are included within the first sæculum, because they do not at all belong to history; and therefore they form a sæculum of their own, and as it were quite a different era. From thence whatever was discovered of old traditions concerning the kings and their time, much of which was in circulation, had now its place assigned to it in the chronological cycle. Those who think this criticism doubtful, would not do so if they were more familiar with what is nearer our own times. It is well known how the romances of the middle ages about Charlemagne and his Paladins, refer to Latin chronicles the authorship of which is ascribed to the Archbishop Turpin. These are now allowed to figure as romances by the side of history; but who would believe that not a hundred and fifty years after Charlemagne, in the reign of Otho the Great, at a time therefore when the crusades were not yet in the remotest manner thought of, there appears already in the Chronicle of Benedict of Soracte a most detailed account of an expedition of Charlemagne to Jerusalem, and that without any consciousness of its falsehood. Before the extinction of the Carlovingian race, utterly fictitious expeditions across the Alps, &c., taken from the history of Charlemagne, are related at large in the Chronicles as positive facts. We are now able to disprove them, because we have contemporary annals, and the history of Eginhard; and as for the expedition to Jerusalem, even without these we may also disprove it from eastern annals.--The same thing occurs in Ireland. There also, pretended annals exist in which a succession of kings are found, among whom Niall the Great, about the time of the emperor Theodosius, conquers Britain, Gaul, and Spain, crosses the Alps, and threatens the emperor in Rome. The most decisive proof can be brought against this completely fabulous tale, as the authentic history in this case is generally known.[36] Had we