r Scandinavian race is agitated by the same movements,
disputing with Finnish tribes (related to the Turks and the Hungarians)
the Danish and Scandinavian peninsulas and the isles of the Baltic:
Gothia, Ostrogothia, Westrogothia, and the Isle of Gothland. At the same
time they spread over the plains of eastern Europe. The Visigoths under
the dynasty of the Balti and the Ostrogoths under the Amali occupy the
steppes of Russia; behind them are the Gepidas. The Jutes (from whom is
derived the name of Danish Jutland) and the Vandals, perhaps mixed with
the Slavic Wends, occupy the Baltic for two centuries. The race of the
Slavs, as yet existing in almost complete historical darkness, is known
to Tacitus but dimly by the name of Wends.

When brought in contact with the Romans, the purely Germanic
individuality ceases, the tribes become Romanized; their gods change,
their habits, their religion: a new world, undreamed in its southern
radiance and sunny luxury, opens before their eyes, accustomed to the
dreary north; victory itself carries with it corruption. In the third
century Rome is no longer feared, in the fourth it is already considered
a German prey. The infiltration goes on through the engagement of
Teutons for Roman military service. The German soldiers, with their
barbarous strength of body, soon reappear as Roman comites, duces,
patricti, counts, dukes, patricians, _i. e._, supreme civil and military
officers at the court; they enter also in masses as laborers, servants,
_fcederati_, or auxiliaries. From such or from simple legionaries they
rise to be dignitaries of a rank but a shade under imperial, like the
Vandals Stilicho and Rufmus, who for a time uphold the existence of the
Roman Empire.

It is true, then, that in those centuries of upheaval the Teutons lost
many of their racial characteristics, of their stock of primeval sagas,
but they also gained immensely from the intellectual, spiritual, and
cultural influence of the southern nations that furnished them with a
stupendous stock of basic material for their future progress.
Christianization and amalgamation instilled into their Teutonic spirit
the germs of that Romanticism which we are wont to consider as purely
Germanic, while in reality it is an elixir of the Christian-Roman
fountain assimilated by the Teutonic soul. The Roman Catholic Church
working upon the soul through the senses the only possible way to reach
and penetrate the soul of primitive man,