amating with the people about them, and four hundred years after
Christ were speaking the language of their tribal home in what is now
Belgium. And these were the Galatians--the "foolish Galatians," to
whom Paul addressed his epistle; and we have followed up this Gallic
thread simply because it mingles with the larger strand of ancient and
sacred history with which we are all so familiar.

It is not strange that Roman courage became a byword. The fibre of
Rome was toughened by perpetual strain of conflict. Even while she was
struggling with Gaul and with the memories of the Carthaginian wars
still fresh at Rome, the Goths were at her gates--their blows directed
with a solidity superior to that of the barbarians who had preceded
them. Where the Gauls had knocked, the Goths thundered.

Again the city was invaded by barbarian feet, and again did superior
training and intelligence drive back the invading torrent and triumph
over native brute force.

Such, in brief outline, was the condition of the centuries just before
the Christian era.

It is easy now to read the meaning of these agitated centuries, and to
recognize the preparation for the passing of the old and the coming of
the new.

CHAPTER II.

The making of a nation is not unlike bread or cake making. One element
is used as the basis, to which are added other component parts, of
varying qualities, and the result we call England, or Germany, or
France. The steps by which it is accomplished, the blending and fusing
of the elements, require centuries, and the process makes what we
call--history.

It was written in the book of fate that Gaul should become a great
nation; but not until fused and interpenetrated with two other
nationalities. She must first be humanized and civilized by the Roman,
and then energized and made free from the Roman by the Teuton.

The instrument chosen for the former was Julius Caesar, and for the
latter--five centuries later--Clovis, the Frankish leader.

It is safe to affirm that no man has ever so changed the course of
human events as did Julius Caesar. Napoleon, who strove to imitate him
1800 years later, was a charlatan in comparison; a mere scene-shifter
on a great theatrical stage. Few traces of his work remain upon
humanity to-day.

Caesar opened up a pathway for the old civilizations of the world to
flow into Western Europe, and the sodden mass of barbarism was infused
with a life-compelling current. This