they, when first known to the Romans, accustomed to offer sacrifice. It
must be confessed that in a later age, a single victim, a criminal or a
prisoner, was occasionally immolated. The purity of their religion was
soon stained by their Celtic neighborhood. In the course of the Roman
dominion it became contaminated, and at last profoundly depraved. The
fantastic intermixture of Roman mythology with the gloomy but modified
superstition of Romanized Celts was not favorable to the simple character
of German theology. The entire extirpation, thus brought about, of any
conceivable system of religion, prepared the way for a true revelation.
Within that little river territory, amid those obscure morasses of the
Rhine and Scheld, three great forms of religion--the sanguinary
superstition of the Druid, the sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the
elevated but dimly groping creed of the German, stood for centuries, face
to face, until, having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they
all faded away in the pure light of Christianity.

Thus contrasted were Gaul and German in religious and political systems.
The difference was no less remarkable in their social characteristics.
The Gaul was singularly unchaste. The marriage state was almost unknown.
Many tribes lived in most revolting and incestuous concubinage; brethren,
parents, and children, having wives in common. The German was loyal as
the Celt was dissolute. Alone among barbarians, he contented himself
with a single wife, save that a few dignitaries, from motives of policy,
were permitted a larger number. On the marriage day the German offered
presents to his bride--not the bracelets and golden necklaces with which
the Gaul adorned his fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse,
a sword, a shield, and a spear-symbols that thenceforward she was to
share his labors and to become a portion of himself.

They differed, too, in the honors paid to the dead. The funerals of the