Page:Pleasures of England (1888).djvu/53

 of Montalembert. He is entirely blind to the conditions of Roman virtue, which existed in the midst of the corruptions of the Empire, forming the characters of such Emperors as Pertinax, Carus, Probus, the second Claudius, Aurelian, and our own Constantius; and he denies, with abusive violence, the power for good, of Roman Law, over the Gauls and Britons.

Respecting Roman national character, I will simply beg you to remember, that both St. Benedict and St. Gregory are Roman patricians, before they are either monk or pope; respecting its influence on Britain, I think you may rest content with Shakespeare's estimate of it. Both Lear and Cymbeline belong to this time, so difficult to our apprehension, when the Briton accepted both Roman laws and Roman gods. There is indeed the born Kentish gentleman's protest against them in Kent's—

but both Cordelia and Imogen are just as thoroughly Roman ladies, as Virgilia or Calphurnia.

Of British Christianity and the Arthurian Legends, I shall have a word or two to say in my lecture on "Fancy," in connection with the similar romance which surrounds Theodoric and Charlemagne: only the worst of it is, that while both Dietrich and Karl are themselves more wonderful than the legends of