The history of these Franks you must read for yourselves. You will find it well told in the pages of Sismondi, and in Mr. Perry's excellent book, 'The Franks.' It suffices now to say, that in the days of Luitprand these Franks, after centuries of confusion and bloodshed, have been united into one great nation, stretching from the Rhine to the Loire and the sea, and encroaching continually to the southward and eastward. The government has long passed out of the hands of their faineant Meerwing kings into that of the semi-hereditary Majores Domus, or Mayors of the Palace; and Charles Martel, perhaps the greatest of that race of great men, has just made himself mayor of Austrasia (the real Teutonic centre of Frank life and power), Neustria and Burgundy. He has crushed Eudo, the duke of Romanized Aquitaine, and has finally delivered France and Christendom from the invading Saracens. On his Franks, and on the Lombards of Italy, rest, for the moment, the destinies of Europe. For meanwhile another portent has appeared, this time out of the far East. Another swarm of destroyers has swept over the earth. The wild Arabs of the desert, awakening into sudden life and civilization under the influence of a new creed, have overwhelmed the whole East, the whole north of Africa, destroying the last relics of Roman and Greek civilization, and with them the effete and semi-idolatrous Christianity of the Empire. All the work of Narses and Belisarius is undone. Arab Emirs rule in the old kingdom of the Vandals. The new human deluge has crossed the Straits into Europe. The Visigoths, enervated by the luxurious climate of Spain, have recoiled before the Mussulman invaders. Roderick, the last king of the Goths, is wandering as an unknown penitent in expiation of his sin against the fair Cava, which brought down (so legends and ballads tell) the scourge of God upon the hapless land; and the remnants of the old Visigoths and Sueves are crushed together into the mountain fastnesses of Asturias and Gallicia, thence to reissue, after long centuries, as the noble Spanish nation, wrought in the forges of adversity into the likeness of tempered steel; and destined to reconquer, foot by foot, their native land from the Moslem invader.