out we may see for ourselves already.--A little tribe of valiant
fair-haired men, whether all Teutons, or, as Mr. Latham thinks,
Sclavonians with Teuton leaders, still intimately connected with our
own English race both by their language and their laws, struggling
for existence on the bleak brown bogs and moors, sowing a little
barley and flax, feeding a few rough cattle, breeding a few great
black horses; generation after generation fighting their way
southward, as they exhausted the barren northern soils, or became too
numerous for their marches, or found land left waste in front of them
by the emigration of some Suevic, Vandal, or Burgund tribe. We know
nothing about them, and never shall know, save that they wore white
linen gaiters, and carried long halberts, or pole-axes, and had each
an immortal soul in him, as dear to God as yours or mine, with
immense unconscious capabilities, which their children have proved
right well.

Then comes another saga, how they met the Assipitti, of whom, whether
they were Tacitus's Usipetes, of the Lower Rhine, or Asabiden, the
remnant of the Asen, who went not to Scandinavia with Odin, we know
not, and need not know; and how the Assipitti would not let them
pass; and how they told the Lombards that they had dogheaded men in
their tribe who drank men's blood, which Mr. Latham well explains by
pointing out, in the Traveller's Song, a tribe of Hundings
(Houndings) sons of the hound; and how the Lombards sent out a
champion, who fought the champion of the Assipitti, and so gained
leave to go on their way.

Forward they go, toward the south-east, seemingly along the German
marches, the debateable land between Teuton and Sclav, which would,
mechanically speaking, be the line of least resistance. We hear of