h and the death of Pagan Rome. This New
World was discovered by one Italian, and its mainland first reached
and named by another; and in it, over a territory many times the size
of Trajan's empire, the Spanish, French, and Portuguese adventurers
founded, beside the St. Lawrence and the Amazon, along the flanks of
the Andes and in the shadow of the snow-capped volcanoes of Mexico,
from the Rio Grande to the Straits of Magellan, communities, now
flourishing and growing apace, which in speech and culture, and even
as regards one strain in their blood, are the lineal heirs of the
ancient Latin civilization. When we speak of the disappearance, the
passing away, of ancient Babylon or Nineveh, and of ancient Rome, we
are using the same terms to describe totally different phenomena.

The anthropologist and historian of to-day realize much more clearly
than their predecessors of a couple of generations back how artificial
most great nationalities are, and how loose is the terminology usually
employed to describe them. There is an element of unconscious and
rather pathetic humor in the simplicity of half a century ago which
spoke of the Aryan and the Teuton with reverential admiration, as if
the words denoted, not merely something definite, but something
ethnologically sacred; the writers having much the same pride and
faith in their own and their fellow-countrymen's purity of descent
from these imaginary Aryan or Teutonic ancestors that was felt a few
generations earlier by the various noble families who traced their
lineage direct to Odin, AEneas, or Noah. Nowadays, of course, all
students recognize that there may not be, and often is not, the
slightest connection between kinship in blood and kinship in tongue.
In America we find three races, white, red, and black, and three
tongues, English, French, and Spanish, mingled in such a way that the
lines of cleavage of race continually run at right angles to the lines
of cleavage of speech; there being communities practically of pure
blood of each race found speaking each language. Aryan and Teutonic
are terms having very distinct linguistic meanings; but whether they
have any such ethnical meanings as were formerly attributed to them is
so doubtful, that we cannot even be sure whether the ancestors of most
of those we call Teutons originally spoke an Aryan tongue at all. The
term Celtic, again, is perfectly clear when used linguistically; but
when used to describe a race it means a