down to the glorious one, when, five hundred years after, Alaric
stood beneath the walls of Rome, and to their despairing boast of the
Roman numbers, answered, 'Come out to us then, the thicker the hay,
the easier mowed,'--for five hundred years, I say, the hints of their
character are all those of a boy-nature.

They were cruel at times: but so are boys--much more cruel than
grown men, I hardly know why--perhaps because they have not felt
suffering so much themselves, and know not how hard it is to bear.
There were varieties of character among them. The Franks were always
false, vain, capricious, selfish, taking part with the Romans
whenever their interest or vanity was at stake--the worst of all
Teutons, though by no means the weakest--and a miserable business
they made of it in France, for some five hundred years. The Goths,
Salvian says, were the most ignavi of all of them; great lazy
lourdans; apt to be cruel, too, the Visigoths at least, as their
Spanish descendants proved to the horror of the world: but men of
honour withal, as those old Spaniards were. The Saxons were famed
for cruelty--I know not why, for our branch of the Saxons has been,
from the beginning of history, the least cruel people in Europe; but
they had the reputation--as the Vandals had also--of being the most
pure; Castitate venerandi. And among the uncivilized people coldness
and cruelty go often together. The less passionate and sensitive the
nature, the less open to pity. The Caribs of the West Indies were
famed for both, in contrast to the profligate and gentle inhabitants
of Cuba and Hispaniola; and in double contrast to the Red Indian
tribes of North America, who combined, from our first acquaintance
with them, the two vices of cruelty and profligacy, to an extent
which has done more to extirpate them than all the fire-water of the
white man.