to rule.

Neither need we object to Dr. Latham's opinion, that more than one of
the tribes which took part in the destruction of the Empire were not
aboriginal Germans, but Sclavonians Germanized, and under German
leaders. It may be so. The custom of enslaving captives would
render pure Teutonic blood among the lower classes of a tribe the
exception and not the rule; while the custom of chiefs choosing the
'thegns,' 'gesitha,' or 'comites,' who lived and died as their
companions-in-arms, from among the most valiant of the unfree, would
tend to produce a mixed blood in the upper classes also, and
gradually assimilate the whole mass to the manners and laws of their
Teutonic lords. Only by some such actual superiority of the upper
classes to the lower can I explain the deep respect for rank and
blood, which distinguishes, and will perhaps always distinguish, the
Teutonic peoples. Had there even been anything like a primaeval
equality among our race, a hereditary aristocracy could never have
arisen, or if arising for a while, never could have remained as a
fact which all believed in, from the lowest to the highest. Just, or
unjust, the institution represented, I verily believe, an
ethnological fact. The golden-haired hero said to his brown-haired
bondsman, 'I am a gentleman, who have a "gens," a stamm, a pedigree,
and know from whom I am sprung. I am a Garding, an Amalung, a
Scylding, an Osing, or what not. I am a son of the gods. The blood
of the Asas is in my veins. Do you not see it? Am I not wiser,
stronger, more virtuous, more beautiful than you? You must obey me,
and be my man, and follow me to the death. Then, if you prove a
worthy thane, I will give you horse, weapons, bracelets, lands; and
marry you, it may be, to my daughter or my niece. And if not, you
must remain a son of the earth, grubbing in the dust of which you