efore mus

r spirits co

it for Rome. Evidently he had enough learning to furnish him with generous ideas about the wealth of the Roman churches, but he had brought only a handful of men, and the city looked large and strong f

group. They gathered about the coffin, and the service began; the priests stood in order to chant and pray, their faces bowed low or lifted heavenward. Suddenly up goes the coffin-lid, out jumps Hasting, and his men clutch at the shining knives hidden under their cloaks. They strip the jewelled vestments from the priests' backs; they shut the church doors and murder the poor men like sheep; they climb the high altar, and rob it of its decorations and sacred cups and candlesticks, and load themselves with wealth. The city has hardly time

es, to recall the great names of the day in literature and art, in order to contrast the civilization and appearance of the invader and the invaded. Yet war was a constant presence then, and every nation had its bitter ene

y pious and charitable toward all religious establishments; no part of Southern Europe had been more diligent in building churches, in going on pilgrimage, in maintaining the honor of God and her own honor. Her knights prayed before they fought, and they were praised already in chronicle and song. The troubadours sung their noble deeds from hall to

earlier date were the true [Pg133] ancestors of all English colonists with their roving spirit and love of adventure, but the Normandy of the early part of the eleventh century was a type of the England of to-day. Its power was consolidated and the territory became too narrow for so much energy to be pent up in. The po

ises, though as early as 1026, we find the Duke of Naples allowing a company of Norman wanderers to settle at Aversa, and even helping them to build and fortify the town, and to hold it as a kind of out-post garrison against his enemies in Capua. They were understood to be ready for all sorts of enterprises, and the bitter flowers

e the licentiousness of nature and passion, and in their eager search for wealth and dominion they despise whatever they possess and hope whatever they desire. Arms and horses, the luxury of dress, the exerci

changes that have overlaid the original Norse and Danish nature. There are French traits n

Norman adventurer and founder of the kingdom of Naples, was leader and inspirer of great enterprises. In following the history of the time throu

eep their old names of the Park, the Forest, and the Dove-Cot; and in this way, if in no other, the remembrance is preserved of an old feudal manor-house. Not long ago some huge oaks were clustered in groups about the

first wife, Muriel, had left several children, and their good step-mother treated them all with the same tenderness and wise helpfulness that she had shown to her own flock. The young de Hautevilles had received such education as gentlemen gave their children in those days, and, above every thing else, were expert in the use of arms and of horses and the pleasures of the chase. They trained their falcons, and grew up brave and strong. There were twelve so

s, and the eager boys at home were looking to him for their own advancement. However, the disappointment was not very long-lived, for at the time when Henry of France was likely to lose his throne through the intrigues of his brother and his mother, Constance of Provence, and came to the Duke of Normandy for aid, Serlon came home again without being asked, and fought like a tiger at the siege of Tillières. You remember that this siege

fiery steed. He asked Serlon who he was, and as if he knew by instinct that he had met his m

hance in Normandy, for the war lasted but little longer. But when Robert had put the French king on his throne again, he determined, as we have seen already, to go on a pilgrimage. There was not much prospect of winning great fame at home while young William the heir was so unpopular and Alan of Brittany was his careful [Pg138] guardian. The de Hautevilles were impatient at the prospect of years of petty squabbles and treacherous intrigues; they longed for a broader field for their energies. There was no such thing as staying at home and training the falcons; their hungry young brothers and sisters were pushing their way already, and the ancient patrimony was growing less and less. So William and Drogo and Humphrey went away to seek their fortunes like fairy-book princes, and hearing vague rumors of Rainulf's invitation to his countrymen, and of his being made count of the new possessions in Aversa, they turned their faces towards Italy. We canno

for their swords. South of Rome were the territories of the independent counts of Naples and the republic of Amalfi. So

were split up already into several weak and irreconcilable factions, and he begged the Normans to go and help his own army to conquer them. After a while Sicily was conquered, but the Normans were not given their share of the glory of the victories; on the contrary, the Lombard governor wa

fited by his advice, and warning [Pg140] lest they should spend their strength by being great in little things instead of aiming at nobler pieces of work. All the high hopes which filled their hearts as they rode away from Normandy must have come true. They were already

o hurry back to defend their own strongholds, and Leo the Tenth was left to fight his neighbors alone, with the aid of some German soldiers, a mere handful, whom Henry the Third had left. The Normans proposed fair terms to his Holiness, but he ventured to fight the battle of Civitella, and was overpowered and beaten, and taken prisoner himself. Then the shrewd Nor

s voice even, showed him to be an uncommon man; his fresh color and the thickness of his blond hair gave nobody a chance to think that he had come from any of the Southern countries. Suddenly Drogo recognized one of his step-brothers, whom he had left at home a slender boy-this was Robert, already called Guiscard. He had gathered a respectable little troop of followers-five knights and thirty men-at-arms made his escort,-and they had been forced to

Indeed he was the inspirer and leader of the Norman successes in the South, and to him

e with Southern enemies, and his wild ambition led him on and on without much check from feelings of pity, or even justice. Like many other Normans, he was cruel, and his acts were those of a man who

e count died and left only some young children, and in 1054 he was made Count of Apulia and general of the republic. We need not be surprised to find his title much lengthened a little later; he demanded the ducal title itself from Pope Nicholas, and styles himself "by the grace of God and St. Peter, Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and hereafter of Sicily." The medical and philosophical schools of Salerno, long renowned in Italy, added lustre to his kingdom,

son: "The Norm

tion of Rome, from which the Mussulmans had taken it. Roger was given the title of count, but his dominion was on a feudal basis instead of being a republic. This success induced Robert to make a campaign against the Eastern empire, and the invasions continue

f vanity and jealous revenge. "Progress in good government," says Mr. Green in his preface to A Short History of England, "is the result of social developments." The more we all think about that, the better for us and for our country. No doubt the traditions of Hasting the Northman and his barbarous piracies had hardly died out before the later Normans came, first in scattered groups, and then in legions, to settle in Italy. One cannot help feeling that they did much to make a

d most severe avenger of crime. He abhorred lying; did every thing by rule, and never promised what he did not mean to perform. He never persecuted his private enemi

ake an interesting contrast with Eastern types left by the Saracens. Outside the large cities almost every little town has at least some fragments of Norman masonry, and in Aderno-to note only one instance of the sort-there is a fine Norman castle in excellent preservation, which is used as a prison now. At Troina, a dreary mountain fortress, there is a belfry and part of the wall of a cathedral that Roger I. built in 1078. It was in Troina that he and his wife bravely established their court fifteen years earlier, and withstood a four months' siege from the Saracens. Galfridus, an old chronicler, tells sadly that the young rulers only had one cloak between them,

e purple, assembled here from lands so distant, from the craggy heights of Hohenstauffen, from the green orchards of C?tentin, from the dry hills of Aragon. They sleep and the centuries pass by. Rude hands break open the granite lids of their sepulchres to find tresses of yellow hair, and fragments of imperial mantles embroidered with t

es in Sout

e William de Hauteville with his brothers Drogo, Humphrey, and [Pg147] Robert

, the culture of an Arabian court ... lived to mate their daughters with princes and to sway the politics of Europe with gold.... What they wrought, whether wisely or not, for the ultimate advantage of Italy, endures to this day, while the work of so many emperors, republics, and princes, has passed and shifted like the scenes in a pantomime. Through them the Greeks, the Lombards, and the Moors were extinguished in th

tury, no doubt there would have been a permanent factor in history rather than a limited episode. The danger of the climate, to those born and reared in Northern or Western Europe, was undoubtedly in the way of any long-continued progress. To-day the Norman buildings look strangely different from their surroundings

g1