CELTS, SLAVONIANS, AND OTHER PEOPLES.--Having noticed the Romans and Teutons, the two most prominent peoples that present themselves to us at the time of the downfall of Rome, if we now name the Celts, the Slavonians, the Persians, the Arabians, and the Turanian tribes of Asia, we shall have under view the chief actors in the drama of mediæval and modern history. At the commencement of the mediæval era the Celts were in front of the Teutons, clinging to the western edge of the European continent, and engaged in a bitter contest with these latter peoples, which, in the antagonism of England and Ireland, was destined to extend itself to our own day. The Slavonians were in the rear of the Teutonic tribes, pressing them on even as the Celts in front were struggling to resist their advance. These peoples, progressing but little beyond the pastoral state before the Modern Age, will play only an obscure part in the events of the mediæval era, but in the course of the modern period will assume a most commanding position among the European nations. The Persians were in their old seat beyond the Euphrates, maintaining there what is called the New Persian Empire, the kings of which, until the rise of the Saracens in the seventh century, were the most formidable rivals of the emperors of Constantinople. The Arabians were hidden in their deserts; but in the seventh century we shall see them, animated by a wonderful religious fanaticism, issue from their peninsula and begin a contest with the Christian nations of the East and the West which, in its varying phases, was destined to fill a large part of the mediæval period. The Tartar tribes were buried in Central Asia. They will appear late in the eleventh century, proselytes for the most part of Mohammedanism; and, as the religious ardor of the Semitic Arabians grows cool, we shall see the Crescent upheld by these zealous converts of another race, and finally, in the fifteenth century, placed by the Turks upon the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople. As the Middle Ages draw to a close, the remote nations of Eastern Asia will gradually come within our circle of vision; and, as the Modern Age dawns, we shall catch a glimpse of new continents and strange races of men beyond the Atlantic. SECTION I.--MEDIÆVAL HISTORY. FIRST PERIOD.--THE DARK AGES. (FROM THE FALL OF ROME, A.D. 476, TO THE ELEVENTH CENTURY.) CHAPTER XXXII. THE TEUTONIC KINGDOMS. INTRODUCTORY.--In connection with the history of the break-up of the Roman empire in the West, we have already given some account of the migrations and settlements of the German tribes. In the present chapter we shall relate briefly the political fortunes, for the two centuries following the fall of Rome, of the principal kingdoms set up by the German chieftains in the different provinces of the old empire.