The Goths, of whose race we are, and from whom we directly come, moved northwestward from the western shores of the Black Sea, where they are first heard of. Their language, in its original form, is lost like the great original Aryan tongue; but as in the case of that tongue, a very early offshoot of it has been happily preserved. This is the Mæso-Gothic, into which Ulphilas, a bishop of the Mæso-Goths, who had become Christians, translated the New Testament and part of the Old about one thousand five hundred years ago. Of the former a very considerable part remains. It is written in large silver letters, on parchment of a beautiful purple tint. This work shows us all of the structure and much of the substance of the Mæso-Gothic language; and in the former even more than in the latter affords, like the Greek, evidence of an origin identical with that of Sanskrit. The Gothic people pushed, and were pushed, northward, and began, in their turn, to divide and to disperse, and soon to be unable to understand each other’s speech, and to regard each other as foreigners and enemies. For it must be remembered that these migrations were slow, extending through centuries; that they consisted of alternate movement and settlement; settlement for many generations in one place; so that the mountains and streams and forests still retain evidences of this residence, in the names given to them by these tribes or sub-tribes of the Aryan people. It must be remembered, too, that in these remote times, at that early stage of civilization, when there were no books, except a few manuscripts on parchment, no strongly built towns, no stability of government, and when inter-communication was slow, difficult and dangerous, an interval of a hundred years was quite as long as one of five hundred of the years last passed, in its effect of separation and isolation of peoples, in its dividing families into tribes, and tribes into strange and hostile little nations.