Page:The Bible of Amiens.djvu/41

Rh towers on the islands. But now let us think a little more closely what our changed symbols in the map may mean—five fleur-de-lys for level bar.

They don't mean, certainly, that all the Goths are gone, and nobody but Franks in France? The Franks have not massacred Visigothic man, woman, and child, from Loire to Garonne. Nay, where their own throne is still set by the Somme, the peat-bred people whom they found there, live there still, though subdued. Frank, or Goth, or Roman may fluctuate hither and thither, in chasing or flying troops: but, unchanged through all the gusts of war, the rural people whose huts they pillage, whose farms they ravage, and over whose arts they reign, must still be diligently, silently, and with no time for lamentation, ploughing, sowing, cattle-breeding!

Else how could Frank or Hun, Visigoth or Roman, live for a month, or fight for a day?

Whatever the name, or the manners, of their masters, the ground delvers must be the same; and the goatherd of the Pyrenees, and the vine-dresser of Garonne, and the milkmaid of Picardy, give them what lords you may, abide in their land always, blossoming as the trees of the field, and enduring as the crags of the desert. And these, the warp and first substance of the nation, are divided, not by dynasties, but by climates; and are strong here,