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TACITUS.

former times, it was not by land but on shipboard that those who sought to emigrate would arrive; and, beside the perils of rough and unknown seas, who would leave Asia or Africa or Italy for Germany, with its wild country, its inclement skies, its sullen manners and aspect, unless it were his home?" He is nearer the truth in saying that the name Germany is modern and newly introduced. It was introduced, however, by foreigners, but not accepted by the Germans. No common collective term was used by them.

The same physical peculiarities throughout the vast population of Germany confirm him in his persuasion, that "the tribes of Germany are free from all taint of intermarriage with foreign nations—a distinct, unmixed race like none but themselves." Their common characteristics are these: "All have fierce blue eyes, red hair, huge frames, fit only for a sudden exertion. They are less able to bear laborious work. Heat and thirst they cannot in the least endure; to cold and hunger their climate and their soil inure them."

The debilitation of the German soldiers by heat is more than once mentioned by Roman historians. To his statement that the eyes of the Germans were grey or blue and fierce in expression, and that, compared with Italians, they were "more than common tall," there is nothing to object; but we protest against his assertion that their hair was universally red. Had he been more polite or zealous for truth, he would have limited redness and its usual accompaniment freckles to the male sex alone. The Latin poets are far more civil, and doubtless more just, than the historian on this important point. The yellow hair and blue eyes of their German female captives excited the admiration of the