Of what sort, then, were the men and women that the present Germans of the Oldenburg and Hanoverian coast have displaced and superseded? Let us investigate. Whoever rises from the perusal of those numerous notices of the ancient Germans which we find in the classical writers, to the usual tour of Rhenish Germany, will find a notable contrast between the natives of that region as they _were_ and as they _are_. His mind may be full of their _golden_ hair, expecting to find it _flaxen_ at least. Blue and grey eyes, too, he will expect to preponderate over the black and hazel. This is what he will have read about, and what he will _not_ find--at least along the routine lines of travel. As little will there be of massive muscularity in the limbs, and height in the stature. Has the type changed, or have the old records been inaccurate? Has the wrong part of Germany been described? or has the contrast between the Goth and the Italian engendered an exaggeration of the differences? It is no part of the present treatise to enter upon this question. It is enough to indicate the difference between the actual German of the greater part of Germany in respect to the colour of his hair, eyes, and skin, and the epithets of the classical writers. But all is not bare from Dan to Beersheba. The German of the old Germanic type is to be found if sought for. His locality, however, is away from the more frequented parts of his country. Still it is the part which Tacitus knew best, and which he more especially described. This is the parts on the Lower rather than the Upper Rhine; and it is the parts about the Ems and Weser rather than those of the Rhine at all--sacred as is this latter stream to the patriotism of the Prussian and Suabian. It is Lower rather than Upper Germany, Holland rather than Germany at all, and Friesland rather than any of the other Dutch provinces. It is Westphalia, and Oldenburg, as much, perhaps, as Friesland. The tract thus identified extends far into the Cimbric Peninsula,--so that the Jutlander, though a Dane in tongue, is a Low German in appearance. The preceding observations are by no means the present writer's, who has no wish to be responsible for the apparent paradox that the _Germans in Germany are not Germanic_. It is little more than a repetition of one of Prichard's,[1] in which he is supported by both Niebuhr and the Chevalier Bunsen. The former expressly states that the yellow or red hair, blue eyes, and light complexion has now become uncommon, whilst the latter has "often looked in vain for the auburn or golden locks and the light cerulean eyes of the old Germans, and never verified the picture given by the ancients of his countrymen, till he visited Scandinavia; there he found himself surrounded by the Germans of Tacitus." For _Scandinavia_, I would simply substitute the _fen districts of Friesland, Oldenburg, Hanover, and Holstein_--all of them the old area of the Frisian.