tates, we have
great difficulty in perceiving anything but the play of the blind,
brutal forces of nature. The changes are countless, a tremendous
revolution endures for centuries, and everything is in a state of flux;
and yet, such were the influences evolved from this chaos that there is
no modern Caucasian state, however remote, where the Germanic impulses
springing from the migration period are not to-day visible.

But, in spite of the existing confusion, there was no epoch of human
history when the influence of thought is more plainly manifest than in
the time of the Teutonic upheaval that left no stone unturned. There was
no German knight who did not endeavor to adopt some shred of the Roman
Empire which he helped to tear to pieces.

Christianity, too, which for centuries was but a vague longing in the
hearts of most men, began to arise and to assert itself, at first
indefinitely, still groping in darkness and strongly intermingled with
the ingrained and venerated pagan conceptions, then more and more as a
living issue. Christianity so gained in force that at the time of
supreme need it saved humanity from sinking back into the degeneracy of
the Roman bacchanal. Under the action of Christianity the ephemeral
barbarian confederacy crystallizes into a permanent political
organization.

At the end of the third century of our era the Teutonic race is already,
though indistinctly, consolidated into four large nationalities, or
tribe leagues, with two inferior, though independent, branches. Where
Tacitus, in the angle between the Rhine and the Main, had seen Sigambri,
Bructeri, Chamavi, Tencteri, Chatti, there is now one great, though
loose, confederation: the Franks. Between the North Sea, the Rhine, and
the Elbe are the Saxons with the Angli in the north, and the Thuringians
in the south. In the angle between the Rhine and the Danube, the beehive
of all tribes (all man), is the confederation of the Alemanni, mixed
with Suevi (_Schwaben_); behind them, pressing toward and beyond the
Rhine, are the Burgundians; and following closely are the Langobards,
who appear on the middle Danube. Near the Baltic, which derives its name
from the Gothic dynasty of the Balti, we have the Turcilingi, the Rugii,
the Sciri, and the Heruli who were tattooed blue. Between the upper Elbe
and the Oder Rivers, the Quadi (in Moravia) and Marcomanni (Bohemia)
seem to disappear gradually, and are probably merged into the Suevi.

The Gothic o