MEANING OF THE WORD GERMAN.

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ever the Romans, however, speak from personal observation, and with more accurate knowledge, and especially when they describe the more considerable Germanic nations in their own neighbourhood on the Rhenish frontier; then, it is easy to perceive that by these so-called nations leagues and confederacies are to be understood. Thus the Suabian confederacy was very powerful, and at first formidable to the Romans, and not less so the league of the Hessians. Both remain to this day; for the most part too in the very same seats, as distinct German races, distinguishable by many characteristics from the others. The league of the Cherusci in northern Germany was rendered remarkable by their prince and duke Arminius (Herrmann). Even the name of Germans is derived from this system, for the Romans extended the name from the tribe among whom they first heard it, to several others, and ultimately to all. In modern times historians have applied to these primitive leagues, and this Germanic custom of confederation, the word "heermannia," in reference to the appellation "Germani." It would be more fit and accurate, however, to render in our present language the word German by "Wehrmann." Our "wehr" signifying defence and arms, is originally the same word as the English "war," from which

the French and Italian " guerre and " guerra" are only distinguished by a different mode of pronunciation; it is indisputably the root from which "German" is derived. Thus the word Germans signifies the Wehr-men, that is to say, not only warriors, but allies for mutual defence and protection, a confederate community. The only thing wanting in these national leagues, was that all the peoples of Germany were not united, not one great confederacy. This could not be accomplished at once; for the Germans indeed, like all other European nations, were originally split into a great number of petty tribes and states. The necessities incurred in their more extensive military enterprises, and more especially in their arduous struggle with the Romans, led to a more comprehensive national combination.

The gradual union of the different German nations, the realization at last of a grand German national unity, its maintenance for a thousand years, and its restoration more than once after temporary disruptions ;-this it is that constitutes our modern history.

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Besides these national confederacies, the real essence and foundation of the state, another species of association existed among the Germans, which was freer, and more adapted to individuals. This was that singular brotherhood in arms, the enthusiastic fidelity in which the Romans describe with admiration and no little astonishment. Out of friendship, warriors would pledge themselves to live and die togetherto share victory or death.

Men eager for fame would connect themselves in particular with powerful and princely heroes, as their free associates and honourable attendants. Their fidelity was so great, that scarcely an instance was known of a retinue of vassals surviving the death of their brother in arms or their chief. From this military friendship and association proceeded the whole feudal constitution. The princely chief was bound to promote the welfare of his followers; and hence the German conquerors divided and distributed whole countries among their attendants, on condition of the same fidelity and honourable service. The love of warlike enterprise was thereby not a little excited; and hence by nothing more than this institution was the spirit of chivalry itself developed; for in these cases war was not the result of any decree of the assembled nobles and people. Even when the confederate state was at peace, if the chief had the courage and inclination to undertake some petty military enterprise, he could fearlessly begin and carry on the adventure. The feudal constitution in its degeneracy was attended by many and great abuses; but we must not on that account overlook its first and noble origin, any more than the great and glorious effects which the spirit of chivalry produced. Effects which are not yet altogether effaced, and which we cannot well wish ever wholly to disappear.

Together with this enthusiastic brotherhood in arms, nothing seems to have excited the attention and astonishment of the Romans more than the relations of the female sex among the Germans; the high consideration which their women enjoyed, the honour and the liberty in which they lived. In this respect also we find among the primitive Germans the first origin of what so favourably distinguishes the manners and civilization of the moderns ;-the spiritual love, the freer and more polished intercourse, the higher refinement of the female sex.

THE GERMAN WOMEN.

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Some influence upon these peculiar relations of the female sex among the Germans may be ascribed to climate. That the German climate had no injurious effect upon health, nor even upon beauty of form, we may easily infer from the descriptions of the Romans. Moreover, physical develop

ment, especially that of the women, was not so early in these colder latitudes, as in warmer countries. The late marriages of the Germans excited the particular attention of the Romans. Tacitus says, they believed this custom to be necessary to maintain the vigour of the race. Certain it is that this custom must have essentially contributed towards the high consideration, towards the freer position of the female Where bodily maturity, as in many southern countries of Asia, is so early, that marriages even border upon childhood ;—where women become mothers even at the tenderest age; there the choice for life can be no free choice; there, even if the laws do allow polygamy, great, almost insuperable obstacles exist to the full development of the faculties of the soul in the female, and to the dignity which she is entitled to by nature.

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The wife, it is true, received no dowry among the Germans; on the contrary, the suitor, as among most nations of antiquity, had to present a gift to the father, ransom-money, as it were. But we must not thence conclude that the father sold his daughter as his property. There was a great and essential distinction between the Asiatic and the German custom. In Asia it is the rule that the husband shall not see the bride until the marriage be actually concluded; in Germany, on the contrary, it was the custom that the suitor and his beloved should be acquainted with one another, and that a long friendly intercourse should precede their union. The alliance was contracted by free choice; and it was chiefly this free choice, and not the simplicity of manners alone, that made the marriages of the Germans in their strictness and happy concord appear to the Romans something so totally different from anything they had been accustomed to among themselves.

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If abductions were frequent among the Germans even in early times, if Arminius himself carried off his Thusnelda, still we must not assume that violence was thereby offered to her inclinations; the father alone was his enemy,

and so remained. In the state of things we have described, it may have often happened that the views of the father were opposed to the lovers and their choice, and that he would not ratify the contract which free inclination had concluded. The wedding-gift the wife received is also worthy of notice; a portion of it consisted of a war-horse, a shield, and some weapon. I do not conceive that this custom was universal; in all probability it prevailed chiefly among the noble families, and the present may not have been meant merely as a symbol, but for actual use. For the women accompanied the army in war, and took charge of the wounded; they frequently restored a losing fight; and if the result was disastrous, often by a voluntary death gave the astonished Romans an unparalleled example of lofty courage.

Thus among this people woman had her part in every great and honourable enterprise, even in those which man regarded as his highest distinction, the pride and the joy of his life.

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To place a rapid sketch of history before our eyes, it is necessary to touch anew upon facts that have been long known. The only thing that in this embarrassment inspires the historian with some degree of confidence is, that the glorious recollections of the past, the great subjects of history carry in themselves a perennial charm; that they remain in a certain sense ever new; and appear in a brighter light to us the more our own lives expand. As the past alone teaches us to gaze with a tranquil eye upon the present; so an eventful present throws light in various ways upon the darkness of the past. How many a page of history, otherwise unintelligible, has, since the occurrences of recent years, received a totally new light! It is a common idea, that the migration of the northern nations was a deluge, as it were, of countless hosts of barbarians, and that, from the eastern frontiers of China down to the western coasts of Spain, a universal restless frenzy, an involuntary impulse, had suddenly seized on all savage tribes and swept, driven, and precipitated them along, till the old civilization was totally destroyed, and the barbarism of the middle age introduced. In reality, and viewed in their historical connection, however, these events present a very different aspect. At first, the Germans and Romans only really took part in them. The Huns, the only

CAUSES OF GERMAN INVASIONS.

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people, not Germanic and coming immediately from Asia, who exercised any influence over this migration, were so little numerous, and their influence was so insignificant, that the development of what had been long ripe for development, would upon the whole have occurred, even without this people, exactly as it did.

Scarcely any other great historical event was so slowly prepared, and brought about-aye even for centuries, so gradually and step by step,-as the migration of the northern nations; that is to say, the armed occupation of the provinces of the Roman empire by the Germans, and their final conquest of the four principal regions of western Europe: Italy, France, Spain, and England. There were two great but simple causes for this event. It had become a necessity to the Germans, in their northern seats amidst a growing population, to send out colonies in order to rid themselves of their surplus numbers. In whatever direction they sought out new abodes, whether in the west, the south, or the south-east, they came in contact with the wide-spread Roman empire. Hence their many great and oft-renewed wars with the Romans, which from the first appearance of the Teutones and Cimbri, somewhat more than a hundred years before the birth of Christ, until the conquest of Rome by Alaric, king of the Goths, lasted full five hundred years. Even those first northern strangers, that struck so much terror into Rome, merely sought new dwelling-places. Not destructive conquest, not a predatory expedition, but colonization, was their object, by fair means, or, if this were unavailing, by recurrence to force. Land, in return for military service, according to the universal Germanic custom, this it was which they demanded on peaceable conditions. A province was to be ceded to them, and in return, as faithful auxiliaries, they would place the general levy of their force at disposal for military service. They came, it is true, as armed military settlers; but even then always peaceably negotiating at first, as did all who, for five centuries, down to the time of Alaric, followed them from the north to the frontiers of the Roman empire. At a later period the Teutones and the Cimbri would easily have obtained their object; and many an emperor would have accounted himself fortunate, by the cession of a province, to gain so noble a reinforcement for his army. A few centuries