These, however, are minor matters which are mentioned chiefly in order to guard against the impression that, because I left them unchanged, I approved of them. The permanent interest attaching to these lectures does not spring from the facts which they give. For these, students will refer to Gibbon. They will be valued chiefly for the thoughts which they contain, for the imagination and eloquence which they display, and last, not least, for the sake of the man, a man, it is true, of a warm heart rather than of a cold judgment, but a man whom, for that very reason, many admired, many loved, and many will miss, almost every day of their life. M. M. LECTURE I--THE FOREST CHILDREN. I wish in this first lecture to give you some general conception of the causes which urged our Teutonic race to attack and destroy Rome. I shall take for this one lecture no special text-book: but suppose you all to be acquainted with the Germania of Tacitus, and with the 9th Chapter of Gibbon. And I shall begin, if you will allow me, by a parable, a myth, a saga, such as the men of whom I am going to tell you loved; and if it seem to any of you childish, bear in mind that what is childish need not therefore be shallow. I know that it is not history. These lectures will not be, in the popular sense, history at all. But I beg you to bear in mind that I am not here to teach you history. No man can do that. I am here to teach you how to teach yourselves history. I will give you the scaffolding as well as I can; you must build the house.