Next, I take in this first sketch the Saxon and Frank together, both
pre-eminently apprehensive, both docile exceedingly, imaginative in
the highest, but in life active more than pensive, eager in desire,
swift of invention, keenly sensitive to animal beauty, but with
difficulty rational, and rarely, for the future, wise. Under the
conclusive name of Ostrogoth, you may class whatever tribes are native
to Central Germany, and develope themselves, as time goes on, into
that power of the German Cæsars which still asserts itself as an
empire against the licence and insolence of modern republicanism,--of
which races, though this general name, no description can be given in
rapid terms.

And lastly, the Lombards, who, at the time we have to deal with, were
sternly indocile, gloomily imaginative,--of almost Norman energy,
and differing from all the other western nations chiefly in this
notable particular, that while the Celt is capable of bright wit and
happy play, and the Norman, Saxon, and Frank all alike delight in
caricature, the Lombards, like the Arabians, never jest.

These, briefly, are the six barbaric nations who are to be taught: and
of whose native arts and faculties, before they receive any tutorship
from the south, I find no well-sifted account in any history:--but
thus much of them, collecting your own thoughts and knowledge, you
may easily discern--they were all, with the exception of the Scots,
practical workers and builders in wood; and those of them who had
coasts, first rate sea-boat builders, with fine mathematical
instincts and practice in that kind far developed, necessarily good
sail-weaving, and sound fur-stitching, with stout iron-work of nail
and rivet; rich copper and some silver work in decoration--the Celts
developing peculiar gifts in linear design, but wholly incapable