German, stood for centuries, face to face, until,
having mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in
the pure light of Christianity.

Thus contrasted were Gaul and German in religious and political systems.
The difference was no less remarkable in their social characteristics.
The Gaul was singularly unchaste. The marriage state was almost unknown.
Many tribes lived in most revolting and incestuous concubinage; brethren,
parents, and children, having wives in common. The German was loyal as
the Celt was dissolute. Alone among barbarians, he contented himself with
a single wife, save that a few dignitaries, from motives of policy, were
permitted a larger number. On the marriage day the German offered
presents to his bride--not the bracelets and golden necklaces with which
the Gaul adorned his fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse,
a sword, a shield, and a spear-symbols that thenceforward she was to
share his labors and to become a portion of himself.

They differed, too, in the honors paid to the dead. The funerals of the
Gauls were pompous. Both burned the corpse, but the Celt cast into the
flames the favorite animals, and even the most cherished slaves and
dependents of the master. Vast monuments of stone or piles of earth were
raised above the ashes of the dead. Scattered relics of the Celtic age
are yet visible throughout Europe, in these huge but unsightly memorials.

The German was not ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments nor
odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the
departed were burned and buried with him.

The turf was his only sepulchre, the memory of his valor his only
monument. Even tears were forbidden to the men. "It was esteemed
honorable," says the historian, "for women to lament, for men to
remember."

The parallel need be pursued no further. Thus much it was necessary to
recall to the historical student concerning the prominent characteristics
by which the two great races of the land were distinguished:
characteristics which Time has rather hardened than effaced. In the
contrast and the separation lies the key to much of their history. Had
Providence permitted a fusion of the two races, it is, possible, from
their position, and from the geographical and historical link which they
would have afforded to the dominant tribes of Europe, that a world-empire
might have been the result, different in many respects from any which has