t
that we had to do over again many of the things which he had once taught
us. But the Roman Empire, when the German accepted it, was no longer the
Empire which had founded the unity of Europe. It was a German Empire,
and though the ancient world fired his imagination, he always saw it
through German eyes.

The next stage in unity was the mediaeval Church, which inherited the
framework of the Roman Empire and extended the area of moral and
civilized life which Rome had initiated.

In this Germany was included, and she played a distinguished part. Roman
missionaries, some by way of England and Ireland, went further than the
Roman legions had attempted, and the sword of Charlemagne did the rest.
Germany in the later Middle Ages was perhaps the most valued of all the
Pope's domains, and her prince-bishops his greatest lieutenants. The
moral and religious effect of the Catholic discipline, appealing to
sides of human nature which Greece and Rome had left untouched, was
nowhere more deeply felt than by the Germans. Spiritually they were thus
lifted at least to the level of the rest of Western Europe, but
politically they remained unincorporated, the most feudal and military
nation of the West.

The growth of nations was, on the political side, the main achievement
of the Middle Ages. Rome had given the framework of a great system, and
into this had poured barbarians from North and East, Goths, Franks,
Huns, Moors, Lombards, tribes at the level of the Homeric Greeks when
they swept down to the Aegean. They came as migrant hordes, and in the
area civilized by Rome and the Catholic Church they settled down as
nations, mingling with the earlier population and divided up by the
geographical configurations of the Continent. Among them France and
England had the advantage. They gained their unity as nations earlier
than any other countries of the West--England in a form which has lasted
substantially unaltered for six hundred years. Spain, which had been
torn asunder by the Moors, was not consolidated fully till the end of
the fifteenth century, in time to send the last of the crusaders under
Columbus in quest of fresh worlds to conquer across the Atlantic. But
Italy and Germany--and especially the latter--remained disintegrated
until our own time. Both gained their union about the same time, fifty
years ago, but by different methods and in a different spirit. Italy,
naturally a compact geographical unit, was welded by a democra