lays of minstrels or the readings of his secretaries. He took unwearied
pains with the education of his daughters, and he was so fond of them
that they even accompanied him in his military expeditions. He was not
one of those men that Gibbon appreciated; but his fame is steadily
growing, after a lapse of a thousand years. His whole appearance was
manly, cheerful, and dignified. His countenance reflected a child-like
serenity. He was one of the few men, like David, who was not spoiled by
war and flatteries. Though gentle, he was subject to fits of anger, like
Theodosius; but he did not affect anger, like Napoleon, for theatrical
effect. His greatness and his simplicity, his humanity and his religious
faith, are typical of the Germanic race. He died A.D. 814, after a reign
of half a century, lamented by his own subjects and to be admired by
succeeding generations. Hallam, though not eloquent generally, has
pronounced his most beautiful eulogy, "written in the disgraces and
miseries of succeeding times. He stands alone like a rock in the ocean,
like a beacon on a waste. His sceptre was the bow of Ulysses, not to be
bent by a weaker hand. In the dark ages of European history, his reign
affords a solitary resting-place between two dark periods of turbulence
and ignominy, deriving the advantage of contrast both from that of the
preceding dynasty and of a posterity for whom he had founded an empire
which they were unworthy and unequal to maintain."

To such a tribute I can add nothing. His greatness consists in this,
that, born amidst barbarism, he was yet the friend of civilization, and
understood its elemental principles, and struggled forty-seven years to
establish them,--failing only because his successors and subjects were
not prepared for them, and could not learn them until the severe
experience of ten centuries, amidst disasters and storms, should prove
the value of the "old basal walls and pillars" which remained unburied
amid the despised ruins of antiquity, and show that no structure could