and many other races into one organized empire, bound
together by a community of laws, of government and institutions. Under
the shelter of her full power the true faith had arisen in the earth,
and during the years of her decline it had been nourished to maturity,
it had overspread all the provinces that ever obeyed her sway. For no
beneficial purpose to mankind could the dominion of the seven-hilled
city have been restored or prolonged. But it was all-important to
mankind what nations should divide among them Rome's rich inheritance of
empire. Whether the Germanic and Gothic warriors should form states and
kingdoms out of the fragments of her dominions, and become the free
members of the Commonwealth of Christian Europe, or whether pagan
savages, from the wilds of central Asia, should crush the relics of
classic civilization and the early institutions of the Christianized
Germans in one hopeless chaos of barbaric conquest. The Christian
Visigoths of King Theodoric fought and triumphed at Chalons side by side
with the legions of Aetius. Their joint victory over the Hunnish host
not only rescued for a time from destruction the old age of Rome, but
preserved for centuries of power and glory the Germanic element in the
civilization of modern Europe.

In order to estimate the full importance to mankind of the battle of
Chalons we must keep steadily in mind who and what the Germans were, and
the important distinctions between them and the numerous other races
that assailed the Roman Empire; and it is to be understood that the
Gothic and Scandinavian nations are included in the German race. Now,
"in two remarkable traits the Germans differed from the Sarmatic as well
as from the Slavic nations, and, indeed, from all those other races to
whom the Greeks and Romans gave the designation of barbarians. I allude
to their personal freedom and regard for the rights of men; secondly, to
the respect paid by them to the female sex, and the chastity for which
the latter were celebrated among the people of the North. These were
the foundations of that probity of character, self-respect, and purity
of manners which may be traced among the Germans and Goths even during
pagan times, and which, when their sentiments were enlightened by
Christianity, brought out those splendid traits of character which
distinguish the age of chivalry and romance."

What the intermixture of the German stock with the classic, at the fall
of the Western Empir