by means of colonies and under the influence of the ruling country, became in a short space of time so thoroughly romanized, as their very languages prove them to have been. The manner in which Mexico and Peru, likewise, after a sanguinary and almost exterminating war against the original inhabitants, were converted, by means of constant emigrations, into a real New Spain, Spanish in language, customs, and race, is the only event in modern times comparable with this revolution. The perpetual civil wars of the Romans, the proscriptions under the emperors,-may have contributed to drive many from Italy, who would prefer the tranquillity of the provinces, and the securer profits of agriculture and of commerce in the smaller towns, to the perilous tumults of the metropolis. These would naturally settle in the newly romanized countries.

As regarded the Germans, the Romans wavered between their two different modes of warfare. At first, they may have entertained the hope and the intention of subjugating the Germans, like the Gauls, perhaps, even of exterminating them, or at least of rooting out their constitution, their customs, and their language; in a word, all that made them German. But soon, perhaps under Augustus, and quite certainly under Tiberius, it became recognised as a fundamental maxim of Roman policy not to provoke the Germans to hostilities, but to keep up and foment discord among them, to organize a party in the country favourable to themselves, to gain over and corrupt individual chiefs, by conferring on them honours and dignities, by invitations to the metropolis, and by the seductiveness of its pleasures.

Arminius appears the greatest and most important character in this whole Germanic period; perhaps because, thanks to the master-hand of the great Roman, who could not refuse him his admiration, we know him better and more fully than any other hero of the time, but also because in him the inmost spirit and the highest tendencies of the age are the most clearly evinced. How arduous was that contest for freedom wherein the Germans were engaged against Rome! What obstacles the hero of his country had to encounter among his own people! What constancy and devotedness, in fine, he possessed, and must have possessed, to enable him, not indeed to obtain decisive success by brilliant victories and conquests, but at least to erect a

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bulwark of freedom for the future, and to prepare happier times by sowing the seeds of great efforts and recollections in the minds of his people!

The whole strength of the vast empire, which had been first consolidated by Augustus, was principally directed by him against the Germans. In the south he succeeded in establishing the frontier on the Danube, and thereby brought several Germanic and semi-Germanic tribes under Roman sway. Less fortunate were his attempts in the north. The country, it is true, between the Rhine and the Elbe was under Roman dominion for a few years; but when Varus, contrary to all the dictates of prudence, sought prematurely to introduce Roman laws and oppression, his celebrated defeat ensued. Here on Arminius's side the perfect and deeply meditated preparation of the great enterprise, as well as in the decisive moment its rapid and complete execution, are more to be admired than the victory itself.

The house of Arminius had been favoured by Augustus, he had himself served in the Roman armies as chief of the Cherusci. He was familiar with the military art of the Romans, their language and civilization, but he remained unalterably devoted to his fatherland. No vulgar impulse, but the clear conviction alone of what was salutary for Germany and needful for her safety, inflamed his hatred against Rome. He proved himself a great general, especially in the war against Germanicus, a foe worthy of him. The latter indeed penetrated into the heart of Germany with a greatly superior force, and boasted or even believed that he had gained several victories; but Arminius ever reappeared ready for battle, and the pretended victories of the Romans terminated in a retreat, in which they were ceaselessly harassed, nay even pursued, by the enemy. Their great historian confesses the magnitude of their loss, and the fact that if Arminius was defeated in battles, he never was so in war.

On this side Germany remained free; the struggle, however, had been most severe; a portion of the country was desolated. Arminius had perceived what was really wanting to obtain security against Roman conquest,-viz., a general union and close co-operation of the different German nations. Hence arose the war against Marbod, a king of southern Germany, who at peace with the Romans, had remained neutral

during the war for the freedom of his country. The government of Marbod, copied from the Roman model, was detested, he was forced to flee, and eighteen years afterwards died ingloriously at Ravenna, a dependant on Roman bounty. If Arminius afterwards was accused of aiming at the universal sovereignty, if he fell through the hatred of his own kindred, and the envy of the other princes, we may well presume from the whole tenour and spirit of his life, that he sought not for himself more than was his due, but rather that he only wished to bring about a fuller union and consolidation of the German nation. He had learned, indeed, from experience wherein its weakness lay, and on this very subject his great views were probably misunderstood.

Arminius was not one of those heroes, who, intoxicated with happiness and fame, follow only their own unbounded impulses and the rapid stream of their fortune. He was rather one of those who, recognising in some great object of public welfare their mission and their highest duty, and gloriously striving against the current of corrupt and perilous times, and against superior force, make a sacrifice of their whole lives in ceaseless exertion and self-devotion. Both his own and his wife's brother lived estranged from their fatherland among the Romans. The former, Flavius, whose German name has not been preserved, even bore arms against him. Siegmund, Thusnelda's brother, was raised to the dignity of the Roman priesthood in the colony of the Ubii. Wavering in his sentiments between the lustre of Rome and the voice of his fatherland, he cast off in shame the treacherous ensigns of alien honours, when Arminius liberated Germany, yet subsequently attached himself to Segest, who was on the Roman side. Segest, the father of his wife, was the implacable foe to the liberator of his country. Even his uncle, who had fought so long by his side, ultimately deserted him, out of envy at the precedence, which the youthful hero necessarily acquired by the glory of his military deeds, and as the elected chief of his nation. He was forced to see his Thusnelda led away captive, and gracing the triumph of the arrogant Roman. At last, bitterest of all, he received for his reward the decided universal ingratitude of his own people! One of the German princes even sent an embassy to the emperor Tiberius to demand poison, at that time unknown in Germany, in order secretly to

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rid them of the liberator of their country, as they were unable to effect this object by open warfare. Even Tiberius replied to the demand, to which a German prince had thus degraded himself, in a manner worthy of Rome's ancient dignity

It was not till after his death, that the deeds of Arminius, by their vast immeasurable consequences, were crowned with their noblest success. With reason did the German nations, when in death envy was extinguished, celebrate the fame of the hero in wide-sung lays; and not without cause have all our modern national historians and poets ever pointed back to Arminius. As the preserver, the true founder and second patriarch of the German nation, he is to be also regarded as the commencement and founder of all modern history, of the free institutions and civilization of Europe. Without him, without his deeds and constancy, all this would not have been, and we may thus say that the brief, toilsome, heroic life of Arminius, filled with strife and sorrow, has produced greater consequences, a deeper and certainly more permanent influence upon the history of the world, than Alexander's brilliant conquest and Cæsar's bloody victories.

The earliest of our national poets has offered a beautiful tribute to our hero in a series of dramatic pictures. It is a pleasing poem not only from its national sentiments and the loftiness and dignity which characterize it in common with all other of Klopstock's works, but from its many great and touching individual traits. It has one singular peculiarity however, that a poem in celebration of the earliest of all German heroes, is written more in the spirit, and in the artificial, terse, sharp, sententious style of a Seneca or generally of a Roman, than with the artless joy and love that would bring back the Germans of Arminius and the simplicity of his times before us.

After Arminius the great Batavian insurrection under Civilis occupies the most important place in the Roman histories. The issue of this remarkable national war, the real soul of which was the enthusiastic prophetess Velleda, is not completely known. Certain it is that the Batavian people, although under Roman dominion, preserved the independence and individuality of their manners and language: they remained Germans. That this was likewise the case among the tribes south of the Danube, in Rhætia, in Vindelicia, Noricum, and Pannonia, is in some districts at least certain,

in others probable. The Germans remained on the whole unconquered, inasmuch as learning much from the Romans, they yet remained true and constant to their national manners and language, and, where they were able, to their old constitution. In individual battles they were often overcome by the superior military skill of the Romans. Many emperors even penetrated deep into the heart of Germany, and of these Trajan, under whom the country between the Maine and the Danube became Roman, maintained himself there the longest. This was perhaps the most dangerous moment for German freedom. Caligula, Domitian, in order to give the spectacle of a Germanic triumph, had prisoners of other nations dressed in the German garb, caused them to let their hair grow, and even to dye it red, because the vulgar Roman could not conceive the Germans to be otherwise than red-haired. Trajan required none of these childish arts, he desired to celebrate a Germanic triumph in earnest. Important in relation to Germany was also Trajan's great conquest in the north-east. He reduced all Dacia to the condition of a province, and sought to secure it by a numerous colony. Of the intermixture of the Roman soldiers and settlers with the original inhabitants, the Wallachian nation, who call themselves Romans, are a still living memorial. It seems as if Trajan had foreseen, from what point the Germans would make their most formidable attacks, from what point destruction would fall upon the Roman empire.

The most important and decisive of the subsequent Germanic wars was that carried on under Marcus Aurelius against the so-called Marcomanni, along the whole southern frontier of the Danube. In this war the Germans penetrated to Aquileia; and when peace was at last concluded, the Quadi, inhabitants of the present Austria, were able to restore fifty thousand prisoners to the Romans. The preponderance of the Germans was now decided, and the fall of the Roman empire easy to be foreseen. Even Cæsar had achieved victories by the aid of Germans; Augustus formed his bodyguard out of them, and all succeeding emperors sought more and more to enlist Germans in their armies.

Under every government from the time of Marcus Aurelius, their influence in the army and the state becomes even more perceptible, as well as at every conclusion of a new peace the