and filled up the spaces deserted by the Goths. Here as elsewhere the
Hun completed his appointed task of a rearrangement of races; thus
fundamentally changing the whole course of future events. Perhaps
there would be no Magyar race in Hungary, and certainly a different
history to write of Russia, had there been no Hunnish invasion in 375
A. D.

The old Roman Empire, which in its decay had divided into an Eastern
and a Western Empire (in the fourth century), had by the fifth century
succumbed to the new forces which assailed it, leaving only a
glittering remnant at Byzantium.

The Eastern or Byzantine Empire, rich in pride and pretension, but poor
in power, was destined to stand for one thousand years more, the
shining conservator of the Christian religion (although in a form quite
different from the Church of Rome) and of Greek culture. It is
impossible to imagine what our civilization would be to-day if this
splendid fragment of the Roman Empire had not stood in shining
petrifaction during the ages of darkness, guarding the treasures of a
dead past.

While these tremendous changes were occurring in the West, unconscious
as toiling insects the various peoples in Russia were preparing for an
unknown future. The Bulgarians were occupying large spaces in the
South. The Finns, who had been driven by the Bulgarians from their
home upon the Volga, had centered in the Northwest near the Baltic,
their vigorous branches mingled more or less with other Asiatic races,
stretching here and there in the North, South, and East. The Russian
Slavs, as the parent stem is called, were distributing themselves along
a strip of territory running north and south along the line of the