virgin soil, where they run no risk of being modified or perhaps
metamorphosed through contact with rival institutions. In America the
Teutonic idea has been worked out even more completely than in Britain;
and so far as institutions are concerned, our English forefathers
settled here as in an empty country. They were not obliged to modify
their political ideas so as to bring them into harmony with those of the
Indians; the disparity in civilization was so great that the Indians
were simply thrust aside, along with the wolves and buffaloes.
[Sidenote: Teutonic March-meetings and representative assemblies]

This illustration will help us to understand the peculiar features of
the Teutonic settlement of Britain. Whether the English invaders really
slew all the romanized Kelts who dwelt in the island, except those who
found refuge in the mountains of Cumberland, Wales, and Cornwall, or
fled across the channel to Brittany, we need not seek to decide. It
is enough to point out one respect in which the Teutonic conquest was
immeasurably more complete in Britain than in any other part of the
empire. Everywhere else the tribes who settled upon Roman soil--the
Goths, Vandals, Suevi, and Burgundians--were christianized, and so to
some extent romanized, before they came to take possession. Even the
more distant Franks had been converted to Christianity before they
had completed their conquest of Gaul. Everywhere except in Britain,
therefore, the conquerors had already imbibed Roman ideas, and the
authority of Rome was in a certain sense acknowledged. There was no
break in the continuity of political events. In Britain, on the other
hand, there was a complete break, so that while on the continent the
fifth and sixth centuries are seen in the full midday light of history,
in Britain they have lapsed into the twilight of half-legendary
tradition. The Saxon and English tribes, coming from the remote wilds
of northern Germany, whither Roman missionaries had not yet penetrated,