the German French and English nations, and new kingdoms were gradually constructed in Germany France. and England. The same movements also account for the foundation of a separate Scandinavian nationality confined to the North, that is to Denmark Norway and Sweden. Obviously this nationality would evolve distinct characteristics according to the various conditions of the country in which it settled. We see such differences in the permanent monuments and antiquities, in names of places dialects institutions laws and other expressions of the social life in each of the three Northern lands and even in single parts of them. But in the far North split up by seas rocks and forests the conditions of nature were pre-eminently favourable to the isolation of minor tribes. The temporal power was thus for a long time divided into many small principalities or kingdoms in close connexion with the heathen system of the North. Owing to this the process of forming a nationality in Denmark Norway and Sweden, and still more in Scandinavia as a whole, must have gone on more slowly than in the countries of the West and South, where as early as the sixth and seventh centuries Christianity and the monarchies that grew out of it hastened on the development of larger states and more homogeneous nationalities with distinct characteristics.

We have already alluded to the sacred signs and images of the gods in proof of the general intercourse and in part the common culture existing among peoples in the centre west and north of Europe. Of this we have another important proof during the national migrations and immediately after. The monuments of

those times still everywhere mostly heathen-are strikingly similar in character. The custom of burying bodies unburnt, generally in rows of graves under the earth, was adopted both by Romans and Barbarians on the Danube and Rhine as early as the third or fourth century. This was due partly to the commencement of Christian influence, and forms a sort of transition from the ancient heathen cremation with burial in mounds and open fields to the Christian form of burial in churches or church-yards. The new style now makes its appearance in south-western Germany France Belgium England and the southern lands of the North. Obviously however it could not have been adopted uniformly fully and extensively everywhere at once. Not to mention the fact that the remnant of the earlier inhabitants would resist an entire change in their ancestral mode of burial, it would appear that some even of the new conquering races (e.g. in Kent in England) long retained the custom of cremation and erection of barrows, while their neighbours and near kindred laid their dead in rows of graves under the earth. The further north we go on the European mainland, the narrower the gap between the new and the old, especially in the Scandinavian countries. Single skeletons under the earth-a mode of burial at first quite foreign-appear at the close of the Early Iron-Age in Bornholm Seeland Fÿen, and in Scania to some extent. In the Middle Iron-Age they are more numerous, being gathered in large burial-grounds. But in Denmark, and Jutland more especially, they did not entirely supersede the burial of burnt and unburnt corpses in barrows, or at times in cists built and vaulted with stone.

Still less was this the case in Norway and Sweden, where as yet no such common burial-grounds with unburnt bodies from this period have been discovered. On the other hand very remarkable grave-finds, some of them of great magnificence, appear from now onwards in the north of Norway, and in Sweden in the Mälar districts near Upsala. They even show traces that numerous burnt-offerings of various kinds of beasts. were sacrificed at the time of cremation. There too the burning of bodies was to some extent gradually relinquished, especially among the more distinguished families. The custom of burying bodies in large warriorhowes, as of old, was not even then abandoned. So too another old peculiar custom continued, particularly in the far off Norway, right through the Middle IronAge and even later, namely that of bending or breaking a portion of the grave-goods, especially weapons. This custom is no longer to be traced in the skeleton-graves or grave-rows either in Denmark or in the south-west and west of Europe. It is also significant of the graves from this time onwards throughout the North, in marked contrast with the graves of the older periods, that we find in them riding harness-and driving harness also at a later time-along with remains of horses in increasing numbers.

But whether the graves of the Middle Age of Iron in the North and in western Europe cover burnt or unburnt bodies, all of them, until the Anglo-Saxons Franks and races of central Germany were converted and had fully adopted the Christian culture, contain remarkably uniform products of a common Germanobarbaric industry, which everywhere sprang up on the

ruins of the Roman culture, especially in the colonies nearest the Danube and Rhine, and in Gaul also, to some extent. The main types are the very same in household chattels weapons and ornaments, which are often decorated with mosaics of stone and coloured glass. Many glass goblets found in England and France on the Rhine and Danube and in the North have such a striking mutual resemblance in form and technique that possibly they issued from the same large factories. In decoration inscriptions and form many of these objects still for a long time betray a Roman style. But Roman types were also largely altered to suit German taste. That such objects were manufactured by or for Germans is evident from the constant appearance of non-Roman sacred marks and animals intimately connected with the Germanic theology.

Throughout the countries of the West the Romans must have left considerable industries among the natives. Here on the fall of the Roman Empire the conquering Germans found great wealth and considerable refinement. But this Germanic character in general did not check the growth of individual taste in various regions. This we may observe in the objects. they manufactured: in many details of form and ornamentation they differ; but the traces of their common origin remain unobliterated.

Still more than in the countries previously occupied and in part civilised by the Romans the Middle IronAge in the Scandinavian North was introduced by a new and foreign culture. In its first beginnings the settlers north of the Baltic, who entered on the IronAge only at a late period, can have had no hand. For

its furtherance and development the older inhabitants of the North at first evidently lacked too many of the necessary conditions. The North therefore more than other lands and for a longer time must have been obliged to supply itself with necessaries and luxuries from abroad. But on the arrival of fresh and more advanced elements of population it began at last to develop for itself a real industry, additional proof of which is given by frequent discoveries of smithy implements. This industry was encouraged by the prosperity which had prevailed in the North from olden times, especially in the fruitful Danish lands, a prosperity fed and stimulated anew by the extraordinary wealth which streamed into these lands from all sides during the Middle Iron-Age, and which was not long restricted to the Danish lands in the south. The discoveries in graves fields and marshes point on the whole throughout the North to a growing luxury, scarcely inferior to that which prevailed at the same time in the Western lands, which the Romans had previously enriched and refined. Our surprise is great so far north of Denmark to find among the funeral stores in various skeleton-graves not only a Roman vessel of red Samian ware, as it is called, with figures in relief, but also a glass cup set in silver with a Greek inscription ("Your health" or "happiness"). Very different however was the condition of things in the regions south of the Baltic from the Elbe to the Baltic Provinces. Here right down to the Danube lands Slavic races from Russia were now settled. They possessed iron implements, it is true, but as far as we can see, brought no special development with them, and were in