e enormous vitality drawn from the conquering race, which race
was in turn conquered by Roman ideals.

So, in the conflict now existing between Spain and the United States,
we see the Spaniard, the child of the Romans; valorous, picturesque,
cruel, versed in strategic arts, and with a savor of archaic
wickedness which belongs to a corrupt old age. In the American we see
the child of the simple Angles and Saxons, no less brave, but just,
and with an enthusiasm and confiding integrity which seems to endow
him with an imperishable youth.

[Footnote A: The famous Gothic code established by him still linger in
much of Spanish jurisprudence.]

CHAPTER VI.

The story of Ulfilas, who Christianized the pagan Goths in the last
half of the fourth century, is really the first chapter not alone
in the history of Gothic civilization but in that of the German and
English literatures; which, with their vast riches, had their origin
in the strange achievement of Ulfilas. He had, while a boy, been
captured by some Goths off the coast of Asia Minor, and was called by
them "_Wulf-ilas_" (little wolf). In his desire to translate the Bible
to his captors Wulf-ilas reduced the Gothic language to writing. He
had first to create an alphabet; taking twenty-two Roman letters, and
inventing two more: the letter _w_, and still another for _th_. So
while, after Constantine, the Christian religion was being adopted by
the Roman Empire, and while its simple dogmas were being discussed and
refined into a complicated and intricate system by men versed in
Greek philosophy, and then formulated by minds trained in logic and
rhetoric, the same religion was being spelled out in simple fashion
by the Goths in central Europe from the book translated for them by
Ulfilas.

All they found was that Jesus Christ was the beloved son of God and
the Saviour of the world; that he was the long-promised Messiah, and
to believe in him and to follow his teachings was salvation. They knew
nothing of the Trinity nor of any theologic subtleties, and this was
the simple faith which the Goths carried with them into the lands they
conquered.

The Romans, who had spent three centuries in burning Christians and
trying to obliterate the religion of Christ, were now its jealous
guardians. They considered this "Arianism," as it was called,
a blasphemous heresy, so shocking that they refused to call it
Christianity at all. The history of the first century of the Gothic