perior energy and martial spirit. "ApTo means the Αριστοι most valorous, the bravest; an aristocracy is, in its origin, nothing else but the rule of the bravest. They called the early aristocrats of Greece the sons of the God of Strength (Heracleida). In fact, the conquering tribesmen place each his glory in his prowess and his honour. Settling among a people comparatively enervated by the drudgery of peaceful occupations, and degraded frequently by the yoke which we have shown to have been gradually established over them by their own chieftains, the conquerors of these chieftains stride through the land with the pride of men who have never submitted to a master, who, under the gods, acknowledge none but equals or inferiors. They bear, too, fresh from their simple homes, the feelings of personal independence, self-respect, and unblemished honour, which have been already pointed out as the characteristics of the noble tribes who are fitted to play a part in the formation of nations. And something there is in the very possession of superiority which, though it may often give rise to insolence and cruelty towards the subject race, raises the self-respect of the conquerors in their dealings with one another; and now, settled as in a camp among subjects who would oust them if they could, they feel the first rudiments of mutual dependence and public duty, even though that duty may regard only the relations of the conquerors among themselves. Language has preserved the name of some of these tribes, to denote in later ages the possessors of the moral qualities which distinguished them in the eyes of their contemporaries. The Franks were the invaders of France when the Gauls and decaying Romans forgot their old animosities in yielding together to the yoke of the more valiant German tribe. The subjugated people spoke of a Frank as of a man who possessed an open generous mind and disdained deceit; and we, too, after all distinct traces of the tribe have melted away in the general amalgamation of the elements out of which the French

nation is formed, pay yet an unconscious tribute to the lofty character of the old conquerors, when, to denote a man who knows no fraud or covin, we say that he is "frank." "Apotol, too, which meant etymologically the bravest*, the sons of "Aps, the God of War, was used in the later ages of Grecian life to signify the best,—a meaning which had been conveyed originally to those who were accustomed to see superiority in prowess generally combined with uprightness of character.

In the dark and half-recorded ages of lawlessness and turmoil, amid which nations have their birth, it should be no just occasion for surprise if land once, or even twice invaded, should still tempt the cupidity of the brigand wanting to become a noble. Not by one invasion only were the elements of Grecian society introduced on Grecian land, nor by a single inroad only from the forests of Germany and the North were the nations of Europe founded. Pelasgians, Illyrians, Siceli, and other bands of marauders whose names figure but darkly in the prehistoric time of Grecian and Italian life, each a fresh layer of society, burst in and subdued the former conquerors, and depressed still lower the original possessors of the soil. So in the middle ages, Saxon, Lombard, Frank, Dane, Norman, came in fierce succession to graft their private interest on the public weal of half-formed communities.

Warlike migrations take place, of course, whenever the population of a tribe exceeds the means of subsistence, and when, instead of changing their mode of life, for instance, by resorting to the expedient of agriculture, which would support a far larger number of men on the same land that is insufficient for them as pasture, the young and enterprising prefer to quit for ever the homes of their fathers, and conquer principalities for themselves.†

The old Latin for soldier, miles, came in the middle ages, after the Lombard invasion, to signify gentleman rather than soldier. Sismondi, Rep. Ital. i. 62.

† Mr. Laing says, the singular phenomenon of the Anglo-Saxons in

But all does not depend on the invaders. The Saracens who overran Spain, the Turks who seized some of the fairest provinces of Europe, were substantially like the Teutonic hordes, but neither succeeded in founding a nation; for, to found a nation, not merely the repeated influx of warlike hordes, but some common sympathies and ties by which they may gradually fuse and intermingle, seem to be required. A broad distinction of race and religion, such as is conspicuous between the two invading tribes I have just mentioned and their subjects, has been in those instances at least a bar to that amalgamation and union of elements, without which a social community has none but a verbal existence. The Moorish potentates had established a sort of feudal domination in Spain, and after the death of Hisham III., in 1031, a sheikh or baron sprang up in every city; tribe quarrelled with tribe, and district with district. Hence the population rose, but, being aliens by a broad distinction of race and of religion, they would not take either the crown or the aristocracy for their champion. The difference of race and of religion inspired them with an equal hatred of the monarch and the barons, and they rose with one accord to expel the Moor and vindicate the cross.

There are two courses open to the conquerors of an alien race. Either, (1.) they may expel it as the Norwegian expelled the Fins who belonged to that Celtic family which had overspread Europe before the Gothic tribes left Asia. In that case the invaders become peasant proprietors, and lose few of the qualities they brought with them to their new possessions. Or, (2.) they may, as did the Turks at Constantinople, the Saracens in Spain, the Thessalians in the lands of the Penestæ, the Tartars

the 8th century leaving a better soil and country in the duchies to seek land and subsistence in England, can only be accounted for by some great submergence of the lands they occupied, or by the invasion from the East of some more warlike people. Laing's Denmark, p. 162.

in China, the Parthians in Persia, and as the Helvetians * attempted in Gaul, reduce the original inhabitants to cultivate the land for them and pay them tribute. In that case the conquerors live in a rude splendour and luxury and an idleness relieved only by military exploits, and which without them, soon enervates the masculine spirits and the hardy frames that won the rich prize. In the history of the Gothic invasions of Italy, this sudden enervation of a conquering tribe frequently excites the reader's surprise. Seizing not the humble fields of rude cultivators, such as the Britons, the Gauls, or the Fins; but finding themselves masters of wealthy cities, replete with a money-getting and cowardly population, who were ready to pay tribute for protection against other spoilers, the Lombard tribes successively melted away their stern iron nature in the lap of soft luxury where they had enthroned themselves. The new races, coming fresh from their rude camp-like homes, knew little distinction between their Teutonic kinsmen and the degenerate Romans. They conquered them with equal ease; but seduced by the sudden acquisition of riches, the soldiers deserted the standard of their leaders to enjoy their wealth. Thus severed and soon enervated, they afforded as ready a prey as their predecessors for a new invader. The same softness of manners has crept over the races which have been successively dominant in France. The Celts whom the

Greeks considered so rashly and madly brave, as to fear neither earthquake nor ocean, after they had been a while settled in France succumbed to the Teutonic invader, who was braced by his constant warfare. And

On the emigration of the Helvetians for the purpose of founding an aristocracy, see Niebuhr, H. R. v. 47, 48.

†The Romans generally evacuated the places in which the Lombards settled, so that the Lombard invasion is not parallel to that of the Turks, for the subject race fled; nor is it similar to the Norwegian, for the subject race in Italy was wealthy and dwelt in towns, and left their conquerors the knowledge of the arts of peace and much of their wealth.

F

in their turn these Sicambrian warriors fell away. Though they at first lived apart in haughty disdain from the Celtic Gauls whom they conquered, yet in less than three centuries the descendants of the conquerors became almost Gauls; and when, in the beginning of the eighth century, the Franks from the territory between the Rhine and the Meuse invaded the provinces of their kinsmen, the warriors who placed their glory in their strong arm and their fiery steeds, felt no measured contempt for the soft nobles who had retired into towns and drove along the streets in bullock waggons. And two centuries later the contempt of the Carlovingian princes was excited by the southern nobles who came in the train of Constance, daughter of the Count of Toulouse, on her marriage with Robert, king of France, in 999 A.D., and betrayed the addiction to luxury which the Carlovingians had been accustomed to associate in their minds with cowardice and inferiority. It became a proverb, "Franci ad bella, Provinciales ad victualia." And so the earliest Norman invaders of Ireland soon found the harper a necessity of their banquet, and preferred the song and the dance to tournaments and manly games; and even laying aside their Norman names, they became so assimilated in habits, customs, and demeanour to the Celts whom they had conquered, that in the second generation the two races could not be distinguished.

It by no means follows from the consanguinity of the tribes who may successively invade a country that they are inspired by any of those feelings which we ordinarily expect to be produced by a knowledge of ancient brotherhood, for in most cases the different manner in which they have lived since their ancestors first parted has produced so great a diversity in their customs, and even in their language, that the new immigrants are considered in every respect foreigners. This was the case with the Dorians who, originally of the same stock as the Æolians, had retained in their native fastnesses the rude simple