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of just and terrible retribution you must wait till the next lecture. And now, to refresh us with a gleam of wholesome humanity after all these horrors, let us turn to our worthy West Goth cousins for a while. They have stopt cutting each other's throats, settled themselves in North Spain and South France, and good bishop Sidonius gets to like them. They are just and honest men on the whole, kindly, and respectable in morals, living according to their strange old Gothic Law. But above all Sidonius likes their king--Theodoric is his name. A man of blood he has been in his youth: but he has settled down, like his people; and here is a picture of him. A real photograph of a live old Goth, nearly 1400 years ago. Gibbon gives a good translation of it. I will give you one, but Sidonius is prolix and florid, and I have had to condense. A middle-sized, stout man, of great breadth of chest, and thickness of limb, a large hand, and a small foot, curly haired, bushy eye-browed, with remarkably large eyes and eyelids, hook-nosed, thin-lipped; brilliant, cheerful, impassioned, full of health and strength in mind and body. He goes to chapel before day-light, sits till eight doing justice, while the crowd, let into a latticed enclosure, is admitted one by one behind a curtain into the presence. At eight he leaves the throne, and goes either to count his money, or look at his horses. If he hunts, he thinks it undignified to carry his bow, and womanish to keep it strung, a boy carries it behind him; and when game gets up, he asks you (or the Bishop, who seems to have gone hunting with him) what you would wish him to aim at; strings his bow, and then (says Sidonius) never misses his shot. He dines at noon, quietly in general, magnificently on Saturdays; drinks very little, and instead of sleeping after dinner, plays at tables and dice. He is passionately fond of his game, but never loses his temper, joking and talking to the dice, and to every one round him, throwing aside royal severity, and bidding all be merry (says the bishop); for, to speak my mind, what he is afraid of is, that people should be afraid of him. If he wins he is in immense good humour; then is the time to ask favours of him; and, says the crafty bishop, many a time have I lost the game, and won my cause thereby. At three begins again the toil of state. The knockers return, and those who shove them away return too; everywhere the litigious crowd murmur
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