On the Intrusion of the Germanic Races into Europe. 33 



On the Intrusion of the Germanic Races into Europe.* By 

 Daniel Wilson, LL.D., Professor of History and English 

 Literature, University College, Toronto. Communicated 

 by the Author. 



Dr Arnold, in that beautiful but imperfect narrative of Ro- 

 man History which his lamented death arrested in its progress 

 towards completion, after devoting a chapter to the descrip- 

 tion of the general condition of Europe at the commencement 

 of the fourth century before the Christian era, thus concludes : 

 — " Such was the state of the civilized world, when the Kelts, 

 or Gauls, broke through the thin screen which had hitherto 

 concealed them from sight, and began, for the first time, to 

 take their part in the great drama of the nations. For nearly 

 two hundred years they continued to fill Europe and Asia 

 with the terror of their name ; but it was a passing tempest ; 

 and, if useful at all, it was useful only to destroy. The Gauls 

 could communicate no essential points of human character in 

 which other races might be deficient ; they could neither im- 

 prove the intellectual state of mankind, nor its social and 

 political relations. When, therefore, they had done their ap- 

 pointed work of havoc, they were doomed to be themselves 

 extirpated, or to be lost amidst nations of greater creative and 

 constructive power ; nor is there any race which has left fewer 

 traces of itself in the character and institutions of modern 

 civilization." 



We must not, however, too hastily assume the extirpation 

 of any race, or the altogether transitory and evanescent in- 

 fluence of its physical or intellectual peculiarities, merely be- 

 cause it ceases to play an independent part as a distinct nation. 

 To those who recognise in all its fulness the influence of 

 primary ethnological differences on national character and 

 institutions, it cannot be doubted that the intermixture of 

 races has largely affected the character of nations. The an- 

 cient Pelasgic and Etruscan races have disappeared, yet pro- 

 bably not by extirpation, but by absorption ; and perhaps 

 contributing, in no slight degree, by their diverse ratios of 



* Read before the Canadian Institute, April 1, 1854, 

 VOL. T. NO. I. — JAN. 1855. C 



