lies, a
portion of this old Sclavonic population (to which Dr. Latham will
perhaps agree); and that this fact caused a hiatus, which was gradually
filled by tribes who after all were little better than nomad hunters, and
would occupy (quite nominally) a very large tract with a small
population.

Would not this theory agree at once tolerably with the old traditions and
with Dr. Latham's new facts?

The question still remains--which is the question of all. What put these
Germanic peoples on going South? Were there no causes sufficient to
excite so desperate a resolve?

(1) Did they all go? Is not Paulus Diaconus' story that one-third of
the Lombards was to emigrate by lot, and two-thirds remain at home, a
rough type of what generally happened--what happens now in our modern
emigrations? Was not the surplus population driven off by famine toward
warmer and more hopeful climes?

(2) Are not the Teutonic populations of England, North Germany, and the
Baltic, the descendants, much intermixed, and with dialects much changed,
of the portions which were left behind? This is the opinion, I believe,
of several great ethnologists. Is it not true? If philological
objections are raised to this, I ask (but in all humility), Did not these
southward migrations commence long before the time of Tacitus? If so,
may they not have commenced before the different Teutonic dialects were
as distinct as they were in the historic period? And are we to suppose
that the dialects did not alter during the long journeyings through many
nations? Is it possible that the Thervings and Grutungs could have
retained the same tongue on the Danube, as their forefathers spoke in
their native land? Would not the Moeso-Gothic of Ulfilas have been all
but unintelligible to the Goth who, upon the old theory, remained in
Gothland of Sweden?

(3) But were there not more causes than mere want, which sent them
south? Had the peculiar restlessness of the race nothing to do with it?
A restlessness not nomadic, but migratory: arising not from carelessness
of land and home, but from the longing to found a home in a new land,
like the restlessness of us, their children? As soon as we meet them in
historic times, they are always moving, migrating, invading. Were they
not doing the same in pre-historic times, by fits and starts, no doubt
with periods of excitement, periods of collapse and rest? When we
recollect the invasion of the Normans; the wholesa