THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 173 



lijinlly be affected to any appreciable degree by 

 tlie hundred years of the English occupation. It 

 was much tlie same, no doubt, with Britain. The 

 so-called Roman soldiers stationed in the country 

 were really recruited in Germany, Hungary, 

 Spain, or Africa; and, though they may, of course, 

 have mingled a little with the people of York or 

 Chester, of Lincoln and of London — the great 

 military and commercial posts — they cannot to 

 any appreciable extent have influenced the physi- 

 cal features of the population of Britain generally. 

 But, when the Roman forces were witlidrawn, 

 the Teutons of the North, first as Anglo-Saxons 

 and then as Danes, began to pour down upon the 

 defenceless provinces. Like their predecessors, 

 the Celts, the Teutons were also members of the 

 great Aryan family of nations — that family 

 wliich has spread itself from Norway to India and 

 from Spain to Russia, and which now threatens 

 to swallow up under its own dominion all the rest 

 of the habitable globe. It wiis formerly usual to 

 suppose that the Aryans had spread westward 

 from Central Asia into the Russian plain and the 

 remainder of Europe ; but a Scandinavian scholar, 

 Penka, has lately shown conclusive reasons for 

 believing that they really started rather from the 

 north and moved southward and eastward, move- 

 ments of conquering hordes being always from 

 the colder, ruggeder, and more mountainous 



