ese lectures
will not be, in the popular sense, history at all. But I beg you to bear
in mind that I am not here to teach you history. No man can do that. I
am here to teach you how to teach yourselves history. I will give you
the scaffolding as well as I can; you must build the house.

Fancy to yourself a great Troll-garden, such as our forefathers dreamed
of often fifteen hundred years ago;--a fairy palace, with a fairy garden;
and all around the primaeval wood. Inside the Trolls dwell, cunning and
wicked, watching their fairy treasures, working at their magic forges,
making and making always things rare and strange; and outside, the forest
is full of children; such children as the world had never seen before,
but children still: children in frankness, and purity, and
affectionateness, and tenderness of conscience, and devout awe of the
unseen; and children too in fancy, and silliness, and ignorance, and
caprice, and jealousy, and quarrelsomeness, and love of excitement and
adventure, and the mere sport of overflowing animal health. They play
unharmed among the forest beasts, and conquer them in their play; but the
forest is too dull and too poor for them; and they wander to the walls of
the Troll-garden, and wonder what is inside. One can conceive easily for
oneself what from that moment would begin to happen. Some of the more
adventurous clamber in. Some, too, the Trolls steal and carry off into
their palace. Most never return: but here and there one escapes out
again, and tells how the Trolls killed all his comrades: but tells too,
of the wonders he has seen inside, of shoes of swiftness, and swords of
sharpness, and caps of darkness; of charmed harps, charmed jewels, and
above all of the charmed wine: and after all, the Trolls were very kind
to him--see what fine clothes they have given him--and he struts about
awhile among his companions; and then returns, and not alone. The Trolls
have bewitched him, as they will bewitch more. So the fame of the Troll-
garden spreads; and more and more steal in, boys and maidens, and tempt
their comrades over the wall, and tell of the jewels, and the dresses,
and the wine, the joyous maddening wine, which equals men with gods; and
forget to tell how the Trolls have bought them, soul as well as body, and
taught them to be vain, and lustful, and slavish; and tempted them, too
often, to sins which have no name.

But their better nature flashes out at times. They will n