Gothic and the Scandinavian). Moving across Europe from east to west,
they slowly drove out the Celts from Germany and the central plains, and
took possession of the whole district between the Alps, the Rhine, and
the Baltic, which formed their limits at the period when they first came
into contact with the Roman power. The Goths, living in closest
proximity to the empire, fell upon it during the decline and decay of
Rome, settled in Italy, Gaul, and Spain, and becoming absorbed in the
mass of the native population, disappear altogether from history as a
distinguishable nationality. But the High and Low Germans retain to the
present day their distinctive language and features; and the latter
branch, to which the English people belong, still lives for the most
part in the same lands which it has held ever since the date of the
early Germanic immigration.

The Low Germans, in the third century after Christ, occupied in the main
the belt of flat country between the Baltic and the mouths of the Rhine.
Between them and the old High German Swabians lay a race intermediate in
tongue and blood, the Franks. The Low Germans were divided, like most
other barbaric races, into several fluctuating and ill-marked tribes,
whose names are loosely and perhaps interchangeably used by the few
authorities which remain to us. We must not expect to find among them
the definiteness of modern civilised nations, but rather such a
vagueness as that which characterised the loose confederacies of North
American Indians or the various shifting peoples of South Africa. But
there are three of their tribes which stand fairly well marked off from
one another in early history, and which bore, at least, the chief share
in the colonisation of Britain. These three tribes are the Jutes, the
English, and the Saxons. Closely connected with them, but less strictly
bound in the same family tie, were the Frisians.