pean island, is now the law of the land throughout the vast
regions of Australasia, and of America north of the Rio Grande. The
names of the plays that Shakespeare wrote are household words in the
mouths of mighty nations, whose wide domains were to him more unreal
than the realm of Prester John. Over half the descendants of their
fellow countrymen of that day now dwell in lands which, when these
three Englishmen were born, held not a single white inhabitant; the
race which, when they were in their prime, was hemmed in between the
North and the Irish seas, to-day holds sway over worlds, whose endless
coasts are washed by the waves of the three great oceans.

There have been many other races that at one time or another had their
great periods of race expansion--as distinguished from mere
conquest,--but there has never been another whose expansion has been
either so broad or so rapid.

At one time, many centuries ago, it seemed as if the Germanic peoples,
like their Celtic foes and neighbors, would be absorbed into the
all-conquering Roman power, and, merging their identity in that of the
victors, would accept their law, their speech, and their habits of
thought. But this danger vanished forever on the day of the slaughter
by the Teutoburger Wald, when the legions of Varus were broken by the
rush of Hermann's wild warriors.

Two or three hundred years later the Germans, no longer on the
defensive, themselves went forth from their marshy forests conquering
and to conquer. For century after century they swarmed out of the dark
woodland east of the Rhine, and north of the Danube; and as their
force spent itself, the movement was taken up by their brethren who
dwelt along the coasts of the Baltic and the North Atlantic. From the
Volga to the Pillars of Hercules, from Sicily to Britain, every land
in turn bowed to the warlike prowess of the stalwart sons of Odin.
Rome and Novgorod, the imperial city of Italy as well as the squalid
capital of Muscovy, acknowledged the sway of kings of Teutonic or
Scandinavian blood.

In most cases, however, the victorious invaders merely intruded
themselves among the original and far more numerous owners of the
land, ruled over them, and were absorbed by them. This happened to
both Teuton and Scandinavian; to the descendants of Alaric, as well as
to the children of Rurik. The Dane in Ireland became a Celt; the Goth
of the Iberian peninsula became a Spaniard; Frank and Norwegian alike
were