o looked the
company gradually departed.

We have quoted this passage at some length, because it is an almost
perfect example of Mr. Belloc's style in these sketches, and because it
touches on, is the visualization of, a cardinal point in his historical
theories. This point has been dwelt upon more fully in the preceding
chapter, and we cannot do more than mention it here. It expresses that
view of the gradual development and transformation of the Roman Empire
with which Mr. Belloc would replace the gloomy view of Gibbon and the
exaggerated horrors, to take a conspicuous but not now important
example, of Charles Kingsley's _Roman and Teuton_. He would represent it
as a period of wealth and order, full of menace, warning and change, but
no more prescient of utter disaster than our own time.

The sketch is a visualization of a short passage in the essay _On
Historical Evidences_:

You have the great Gallo-Roman noble family of Ferreolus running
down the centuries from the Decline of the Empire to the climax of
Charlemagne. Many of those names stand for some most powerful
individuality, yet all we have is a formula, a lineage, with
symbols and names in the place of living beings.... The men of that
time did not even think to tell us that there was such a thing as a
family tradition, nor did it seem important to them to establish
its Roman origin and its long succession in power.

Mr. Belloc has endeavoured to see the reality of such a family, as he
believes, as that from which Charlemagne sprung. He fights,
paradoxically, for the unity of history against Freeman, who invented
that phrase and who yet thought that "Charles the Great" came from a
line of German savages.

He has endeavoured passionately to realize this thing; it would be
pathetic, were not his desire so triumphantly gratified. Observe the
ease and sincerity of that long passage quoted above. One forcing of the
note, one moment's wish to show too great a scholarship or to emphasize
the antiquity of the scene, would have ruined the effect. It is full of
emotion, the most poignant, the regret for passing and irrevocable
things, but the author is detached and cool. He is all bent on the
fidelity of his picture.

_The Girondin_ is very much a different matter and occupies a place in
Mr. Belloc's work difficult to discuss. It is frankly a novel, written
as novels are, to entertain, to edify and to perform the spiri