o disrespect
to Dr. Latham; but simply because his theory seems to me adhuc sub
judice. It is this, as far as I understand it. That 'Goth' was not the
aboriginal name of the race. That they were probably not so called till
they came into the land of the Getae, about the mouths of the Danube.
That the Teutonic name for the Ostrogoths was Grutungs, and that of the
Visigoths (which he does not consider to mean West-Goths) Thervings,
Thuringer. That on reaching the land of the Getae they took their name;
'just as the Kentings of Anglo-Saxon England took name from the Keltic
country of Kent;' and that the names Goth, Gothones, Gothini were
originally given to Lithuanians by their Sclavonic neighbours. I merely
state the theory, and leave it for the judgment of others.

The principal points which Dr. Latham considers himself to have
established, are--

That the area and population of the Teutonic tribes have been, on the
authority of Tacitus, much overrated; many tribes hitherto supposed to be
Teutonic being really Sclavonic, &c.

This need not shock our pride, if proved--as it seems to me to be. The
nations who have influenced the world's destiny have not been great, in
the modern American sense of 'big;' but great in heart, as our
forefathers were. The Greeks were but a handful at Salamis; so were the
Romans of the Republic; so were the Spaniards of America; so, probably,
were the Aztecs and Incas whom they overthrew; and surely our own
conquerors and re-conquerers of Hindostan have shewn enough that it is
not numbers, but soul, which gives a race the power to rule.

Neither need we object to Dr. Latham's opinion, that more than one of the
tribes which took part in the destruction of the Empire were not
aboriginal Germans, but Sclavonians Germanized, and under German leaders.
It may be so. The custom of enslaving captives would render pure
Teutonic blood among the lower classes of a tribe the exception and not
the rule; while the custom of chiefs choosing the 'thegns,' 'gesitha,' or
'comites,' who lived and died as their companions-in-arms, from among the
most valiant of the unfree, would tend to produce a mixed blood in the
upper classes also, and gradually assimilate the whole mass to the
manners and laws of their Teutonic lords. Only by some such actual
superiority of the upper classes to the lower can I explain the deep
respect for rank and blood, which distinguishes, and will perhaps always
distinguish, th