The result of this survey is to show how great, and at the same time how gradual, was the extension of the German power eastward. A Roman Empire with a long Baltic coast was something that had never been dreamed of in earlier days. If the extension of the German name was but the recovery of long lost Teutonic lands, the extension to them of the Imperial name which had become identified with Germany was at least wholly new. ♦The Slavonic lands Germanized.♦ In all the lands now annexed, save in a few exceptional districts, German annexation meant German colonization, and the assimilation of the surviving inhabitants to the speech and manners of Germany. Colonists were brought, specially from the Frisian lands, by whose means the Low-Dutch tongue was spread along the whole southern coast of the Baltic. German cities were founded. The marchlands grew into powerful German states. At last one of these marchlands, united with a German conquest still further cut off from the heart of the old German realm, has grown into a state which in our own days has become the Imperial power of Germany. * * * * * ♦Internal geography of Germany.♦ The internal geography of the German kingdom is the greatest difficulty of such a work as the present. To trace the boundaries of the kingdom as against other kingdoms is comparatively easy; but to trace out the endless shiftings, the unions and the divisions, of the countless small principalities and commonwealths which arose within the kingdom, would be a hopeless attempt. ♦Growth of the principalities.♦ Still the growth of the dukes, counts, and other princes of Germany into independent sovereigns is the great feature of German history, as the consequent wiping out of old divisions, and shifting to and fro of old names, is the special feature of German historical geography. ♦Changes in nomenclature.♦ The dying out of the old names has a historical interest, and the growth of the new powers which have supplanted them has both an historical and a political interest. ♦Origin of Prussia and Austria.♦ It is specially important to mark how the two powers which have stood at the head of Germany in modern times in no way represent any of the old divisions of the German name. They have grown out of the outlying _marks_ planted against the Slave and the Magyar. The mark of _Brandenburg_, the mark against the Slave, has grown into the kingdom of _Prussia_, the Imperial state of Germany in its latest form. The _Eastern_ mark, the mark against the Magyar, has grown into the archduchy which gave Germany so many kings, into the so-called Austrian ‘empire,’ into the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of our own day. ♦Analogies between Brandenburg and other marchlands.♦ The growth of Brandenburg or Prussia again affords an instructive comparison with the growth of Wessex in England, of France in Gaul, and of Castile in Spain. In all these cases alike, it has been a marchland which has come to the front