again and again
he rises, with a noble shame, to virtue and patriotism, trampling under
foot selfish luxury and glory, till the victory is complete; and he turns
away in the very moment of the greatest temptation, from the bewitching
city, to wander, fight, starve, and at last conquer a new land for
himself and for his nation; and shew, by thirty years of justice and
wisdom, what that true Dietrich was, which had been so long overlaid by
the false Dietrich of his sinful youth.

Look at the facts of his history, as they stand, and see whether they do
not bear out this, and no other, theory of his character.

The year was 455, two years after Attila's death. Near Vienna a boy was
born, of Theodemir one of the Gothic kings and his favourite Erleva. He
was sent when eight years old to Constantinople as a hostage. The
Emperor Leo had agreed to pay the Goths 300 pounds of gold every year, if
they would but leave him in peace; and young Dietrich was the pledge of
the compact. There he grew up amid all the wisdom of the Romans,
watching it all, and yet never even learning to write. It seems to some
that the German did not care to learn; it seems to me rather that they
did not care to teach. He came back to his people at eighteen, delighted
them by his strength and stature, and became, to all appearance, a Goth
of the Goths; going adventures with six thousand volunteers against the
Sarmatae, who had just defeated the Greeks, and taken a city--which he
retook, but instead of restoring it to the Emperor, kept himself. Food
becoming scarce in Austria, the Ostrogoths moved some into Italy, some
down on Illyria and Thessaly; and the Emperor gracefully presented them
with the country of which they had already taken possession.

In every case, you see, this method went on. The failing Emperors bought
off the Teutons where they could; submitted to them where they could not;
and readily enough turned on them when they had a chance. The relations
between the two parties can be hardly better explained, than by comparing
them to those between the English adventurers in Hindostan and the
falling Rajahs and Sultans of the last century.

After a while Theodoric, or Dietrich, found himself, at his father's
death, sole king of the Ostrogoths. This period of his life is very
obscure: but one hint at least we have, which may explain his whole
future career. Side by side with him and with his father before him,
there was another Diet