The Races of the Danube. 237 



and not wandering nomads. It may seem odd to 

 speak of races as " settled " who moved about so 

 extensively over the face of Europe within the 

 short period of two centuries. But if they wan- 

 dered, it was only because they were driven by 

 enemies in the rear too strong or too numerous 

 for them to overcome, not because their mode of 

 life obliged them to roam over vast areas in quest 

 of the means of subsistence. The profound phi- 

 lology of the present day has shown that the 

 Aryans, while still in their primitive Asiatic 

 home, and long before they had become distin- 

 guishable as Kelts, Graeco-Italians, Teutons, Slavs, 

 or Indo-Persians, had advanced beyond the hunt- 

 ing and exclusively pastoral stages of barbarism, 

 and acquired a subsistence partly by tilling the 

 noil and partly by the rearing of domestic cattle. 

 They possessed even houses and inclosed towns, 

 and the rudiments of what Mr. Bagehot calls 

 "government by discussion " were not wholly un- 

 known to them. The picture of society with 

 which we are familiar in the Germania of Tacitus 

 and in the Homeric poems represents a condition 

 of things in many respects similar to that which 

 obtained among the primitive Aryans. In these 

 respects they differed widely from the savage 

 Tataric hordes which molested them on the east, 



