FATE OF CIVILIZATION. The most important question to ask is, How much of the manner of living or civilization of the Greeks and the Romans did the later Europeans still retain? The answer is found in the history of the Middle Ages. In this history is also found what men added to that which they had learned from the Greeks and the Romans. The emigrants to America were to carry with them knowledge which not even the wisest men of the ancient world had possessed. [Illustration: WALL OF AURELIAN This wall enclosed the ancient city of Rome. It was about thirteen miles in circumference, fifty-five feet high, and had three hundred towers] MEDIAEVAL GERMAN EMIGRANTS. The first part of the history of the Middle Ages explains how the German peoples from whom most of our forefathers were descended began to move from the northern forests towards the borders of the Roman Empire. Many thousand men had already crossed the Rhine and the Danube to serve in the Roman armies. Sometimes an unusually strong and skilful warrior would be made a general. Germans had also crossed the Rhine to work as farmers on the estates of the rich Gallic nobles. Other Germans, called Goths, worked in Constantinople and the cities of the East as masons, porters, and water-carriers. The Romans had owned so many slaves that they had lost the habit of work and were glad to hire these foreigners. STORY OF ULFILAS. Many of the Goths who lived north of the Danube had forsaken their old gods and become Christians. They were taught by Bishop Ulfilas, once a captive among them, afterward a missionary. He translated the Bible into the Gothic language, and this translation is the most ancient specimen of German that we possess. Many of the other German tribes learned about Christianity from the Goths, and although they might be enemies of the Roman government, they were not enemies of the Church. THE GOTHS INVADE THE ROMAN EMPIRE. The Roman emperors tried to prevent the northern tribes from crossing the frontier in great numbers, because, once across, if they did not find work and food, they became plunderers. Not many years after Constantine's death, a million Goths had passed the Danube and had plundered the country almost to the walls of Constantinople. This was not like the invasion of a regular army, which comes to fight battles and to arrange terms of peace.