But the part of Dr. Latham's 'Germania' to which I am bound to call most attention, because I have not followed it, is that interesting part of the Prolegomena, in which he combats the generally received theory, that, between the time of Tacitus and that of Charlemagne, vast masses of Germans had migrated southward from between the Elbe and the Vistula; and that they had been replaced by the Sclavonians who certainly were there in Charlemagne's days. Dr. Latham argues against this theory with a great variety of facts and reasons. But has he not overstated his case on some points? Need the migrations necessary for this theory have been of 'unparalleled magnitude and rapidity'? As for the 'unparalleled completeness' on which he lays much stress, from the fact that no remnants of Teutonic population are found in the countries evacuated: Is it the fact that 'history only tells us of German armies having advanced south'? Do we not find four famous cases--the irruption of the Cimbri and Teutons into Italy; the passage of the Danube by the Visigoths; and the invasions of Italy first by the Ostrogoths, then by the Lombards--in which the nations came with men, women, and children, horses, cattle, and dogs, bag and baggage? May not this have been the custom of the race, with its strong feeling for the family tie; and may not this account for no traces of them being left behind? Does not Dr. Latham's theory proceed too much on an assumption that the Sclavonians dispossest the Teutons by force? And is not this assumption his ground for objecting that the movement was effected improbably 'by that division of the European population (the Sclavonic and Lithuanian) which has, within the historic period, receded before the Germanic'? Are these migrations, though 'unrepresented in any history' (i.e. contemporaneous), really 'unrepresented in any tradition'? Do not the traditions of Jornandes and Paulus Diaconus, that the Goths and the Lombards came from Scandinavia, represent this very fact?--and are they to be set aside as naught? Surely not. Myths of this kind generally embody a nucleus of truth, and must be regarded with respect; for they often, after all arguments about them are spent, are found to contain the very pith of the matter. Are the 'phenomena of replacement and substitution' so very strange--I will not say upon the popular theory, but at least on one half-way between it and Dr. Latham's? Namely-- That the Teutonic races came originally, as some of them say they did, from Scandinavia, Denmark, the South Baltic, &c. That they forced their way down, wave after wave, on what would have been the line of least resistance--the Marches between the Gauls, Romanized or otherwise, and the Sclavonians. And that the Alps and the solid front of the Roman Empire turned them to the East, till their vanguard found itself on the Danube.