Athanaric, 'judge,' or alderman of the Thervings, had sent through the camp--so runs the story--the waggon which bore the idol of Woden, and had burnt, with their tents and their families, those who refused to worship. They, like all other German tribes, were ruled over by two royal races, sons of Woden and the Asas. The Ostrogoth race was the Amalungs--the 'heavenly,' or 'spotless' race; the Visigoth race was the Balthungs--the 'bold' or 'valiant' race; and from these two families, and from a few others, but all believed to be lineally descended from Woden, and now much intermixed, are derived all the old royal families of Europe, that of the House of Brunswick among the rest. That they were no savages, is shewn sufficiently by their names, at least those of their chiefs. Such names as Alaric, 'all rich' or 'all powerful,' Ataulf, 'the helping father,' Fridigern, 'the willing peace- maker,' and so forth--all the names in fact, which can be put back into their native form out of their Romanized distortions, are tokens of a people far removed from that barbarous state in which men are named after personal peculiarities, natural objects, or the beasts of the field. On this subject you may consult, as full of interest and instruction, the list of Teutonic names given in Muratori. They had broken over the Roman frontier more than once, and taken cities. They had compelled the Emperor Gratian to buy them off. They had built themselves flat-bottomed boats without iron in them and sailed from the Crimea round the shores of the Black Sea, once and again, plundering Trebizond, and at last the temple itself of Diana at Ephesus. They had even penetrated into Greece and Athens, plundered the Parthenon, and threatened the capitol. They had fought the Emperor Decius, till he, and many of his legionaries, were drowned in a bog in the moment of victory. They had been driven with difficulty back across the Danube by Aurelian, and walled out of the Empire with the Allemanni by Probus's 'Teufels-Mauer,' stretching from the Danube to the Rhine. Their time was not yet come by a hundred years. But they had seen and tasted the fine things of the sunny south, and did not forget them amid the steppes and snows.