collapse and rest? When we recollect the invasion of the Normans;
the wholesale eastward migration of the Crusaders, men, women, and
children; and the later colonization by Teutonic peoples, of every
quarter of the globe, is there anything wonderful in the belief that
similar migratory manias may have seized the old tribes; that the
spirit of Woden, 'the mover,' may have moved them, and forced them to
go ahead, as now? Doubtless the theory is strange. But the Teutons
were and are a strange people; so strange, that they have conquered--
one may almost say that they are--all nations which are alive upon
the globe; and we may therefore expect them to have done strange
things even in their infancy.

The Romans saw them conquer the empire; and said, the good men among
them, that it was on account of their superior virtue. But beside
the virtue which made them succeed, there must have been the
adventurousness which made them attempt. They were a people fond of
'avanturen,' like their descendants; and they went out to seek them;
and found enough and to spare.

(4) But more, had they never heard of Rome? Surely they had, and at
a very early period of the empire. We are apt to forget, that for
every discovery of the Germans by the Romans, there was a similar
discovery of the Romans by the Germans, and one which would tell
powerfully on their childish imagination. Did not one single Kemper
or Teuton return from Marius' slaughter, to spread among the tribes
(niddering though he may have been called for coming back alive) the
fair land which they had found, fit for the gods of Valhalla; the
land of sunshine, fruits and wine, wherein his brothers' and sisters'
bones were bleaching unavenged? Did no gay Gaul of the Legion of the
Lark, boast in a frontier wine-house to a German trapper, who came in