ss, when entering Reims,
Orange, or Saintes under triumphal arches erected by his ancestors; he
might recognise their tombs at the "Aliscamps" of Arles; could see
_Antigone_ played at Orange, and seated on the gradines of the
amphitheatre, facing the blue horizon of Provence, still behold blood
flowing in the arena.

Gaul was not, like Britain, disorganised and deprived of its legions
when the Germanic hordes appeared; the victor had to reckon with the
vanquished; the latter became not a slave but an ally, and this
advantage, added to that of superior numbers and civilisation, allowed
the Gallo-Roman to reconquer the invader. Latin tradition was so
powerful that it was accepted by Clovis himself. That long-haired
chieftain donned the toga and chlamys; he became a _patrice_; although
he knew by experience that he derived his power from his sword, it
pleased him to ascribe it to the emperor. He had an instinct of what
Rome was. The prestige of the emperor was worth an army to him, and
assisted him to rule his latinised subjects. Conquered, pillaged,
sacked, and ruined, the Eternal City still remained fruitful within her
crumbling walls. Under the ruins subsisted living seeds, one, amongst
others, most important of all, containing the great Roman idea, the
notion of the State. The Celts hardly grasped it, the Germans only at a
late period. Clovis, barbarian though he was, became imbued with it. He
endeavoured to mould his subjects, Franks, Gallo-Romans, and Visigoths,
so as to form a State, and in spite of the disasters that followed, his
efforts were not without some durable results.

In France the vanquished taught the victors their language; the
grandsons of Clovis wrote Latin verses; and it is owing to poems written
in a Romance idiom that Karl the Frank became the "Charlemagne" of
legend and history; so that at last the new empire founded in Gaul had
nothing Germanic save the name. The name, however, has survived, and is
the name of France.

Thus, and not by an impossible massacre, can be explained the different
results of the invasions in France and England. In both countries, but
less abundantly in the latter, the Celtic race has been perpetuated, and
the veil which covers it to-day, a Latin or Germanic tissue, is neither
so close nor so thick that we cannot distinguish through its folds the
forms of British or Gaulish genius; a very special and easily
recognisable genius, very different from that of the ancients