Domenico Selvo.  The Venetians are at this moment undoubted masters in all naval warfare; the Normans are worsted easily the first day,—­the second day, fighting harder, they are defeated again, and so disastrously that the Venetian Doge takes no precautions against them on the third day, thinking them utterly disabled.  Guiscard attacks him again on the third day, with the mere wreck of his own ships, and defeats the tired and amazed Italians finally!

The sea-fight between Alfred’s ships and those of Hasting, ought to be still more memorable to us.  Alfred, as I noticed in last lecture, had built war ships nearly twice as long as the Normans’, swifter, and steadier on the waves.  Six Norman ships were ravaging the Isle of Wight; Alfred sent nine of his own to take them.  The King’s fleet found the Northmen’s embayed, and three of them aground.  The three others engaged Alfred’s nine, twice their size; two of the Viking ships were taken, but the third escaped, with only five men!  A nation which verily took its pleasures in its Deeds.

But before I can illustrate farther either their deeds or their religion, I must for an instant meet the objection which I suppose the extreme probity of the nineteenth century must feel acutely against these men,—­that they all lived by thieving.

Without venturing to allude to the raison d’etre of the present French and English Stock Exchanges, I will merely ask any of you here, whether of Saxon or Norman blood, to define for himself what he means by the “possession of India.”  I have no doubt that you all wish to keep India in order, and in like manner I have assured you that Duke William wished to keep England in order.  If you will read the lecture on the life of Sir Herbert Edwardes, which I hope to give in London after finishing this course,[20] you will see how a Christian British officer can, and does, verily, and with his whole heart, keep in order such part of India as may be entrusted to him, and in so doing, secure our Empire.  But the silent feeling and practice of the nation about India is based on quite other motives than Sir Herbert’s.  Every mutiny, every danger, every terror, and every crime, occurring under, or paralyzing, our Indian legislation, arises directly out of our national desire to live on the loot of India, and the notion always entertained by English young gentlemen and ladies of good position, falling in love with each other without immediate prospect of establishment in Belgrave Square, that they can find in India, instantly on landing, a bungalow ready furnished with the loveliest fans, china, and shawls,—­ices and sherbet at command,—­four-and-twenty slaves succeeding each other hourly to swing the punkah, and a regiment with a beautiful band to “keep order” outside, all round the house.

[Footnote 20:  This was prevented by the necessity for the re-arrangement of my terminal Oxford lectures:  I am now preparing that on Sir Herbert for publication in a somewhat expanded form.]