The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 | Page 7

exported salted provisions as far as Rome. The truculent German,
Ger-mane, Heer-mann, War-man, considered carnage the only useful

occupation, and despised agriculture as enervating and ignoble. It was
base, in his opinion, to gain by sweat what was more easily acquired by
blood. The land was divided annually by the magistrates, certain farms
being assigned to certain families, who were forced to leave them at the
expiration of the year. They cultivated as a common property the lands
allotted by the magistrates, but it was easier to summon them to the
battle-field than to the plough. Thus they were more fitted for the
roaming and conquering life which Providence was to assign to them
for ages, than if they had become more prone to root themselves in the
soil. The Gauls built towns and villages. The German built his solitary
hut where inclination prompted. Close neighborhood was not to his
taste.
In their system of religion the two races were most widely contrasted.
The Gauls were a priest-ridden race. Their Druids were a dominant
caste, presiding even over civil affairs, while in religious matters their
authority was despotic. What were the principles of their wild
Theology will never be thoroughly ascertained, but we know too much
of its sanguinary rites. The imagination shudders to penetrate those
shaggy forests, ringing with the death-shrieks of ten thousand human
victims, and with the hideous hymns chanted by
smoke-and-blood-stained priests to the savage gods whom they served.
The German, in his simplicity, had raised himself to a purer belief than
that of the sensuous Roman or the superstitious Gaul. He believed in a
single, supreme, almighty God, All-Vater or All-father. This Divinity
was too sublime to be incarnated or imaged, too infinite to be enclosed
in temples built with hands. Such is the Roman's testimony to the lofty
conception of the German. Certain forests were consecrated to the
unseen God whom the eye of reverent faith could alone behold. Thither,
at stated times, the people repaired to worship. They entered the sacred
grove with feet bound together, in token of submission. Those who fell
were forbidden to rise, but dragged themselves backwards on the
ground. Their rules were few and simple. They had no caste of priests,
nor were they, when first known to the Romans, accustomed to offer
sacrifice. It must be confessed that in a later age, a single victim, a
criminal or a prisoner, was occasionally immolated. The purity of their
religion was soon stained by their Celtic neighborhood. In the course of
the Roman dominion it became contaminated, and at last profoundly

depraved. The fantastic intermixture of Roman mythology with the
gloomy but modified superstition of Romanized Celts was not
favorable to the simple character of German theology. The entire
extirpation, thus brought about, of any conceivable system of religion,
prepared the way for a true revelation. Within that little river territory,
amid those obscure morasses of the Rhine and Scheld, three great
forms of religion--the sanguinary superstition of the Druid, the
sensuous polytheism of the Roman, the elevated but dimly groping
creed of the German, stood for centuries, face to face, until, having
mutually debased and destroyed each other, they all faded away in the
pure light of Christianity.
Thus contrasted were Gaul and German in religious and political
systems. The difference was no less remarkable in their social
characteristics. The Gaul was singularly unchaste. The marriage state
was almost unknown. Many tribes lived in most revolting and
incestuous concubinage; brethren, parents, and children, having wives
in common. The German was loyal as the Celt was dissolute. Alone
among barbarians, he contented himself with a single wife, save that a
few dignitaries, from motives of policy, were permitted a larger number.
On the marriage day the German offered presents to his bride--not the
bracelets and golden necklaces with which the Gaul adorned his
fair-haired concubine, but oxen and a bridled horse, a sword, a shield,
and a spear-symbols that thenceforward she was to share his labors and
to become a portion of himself.
They differed, too, in the honors paid to the dead. The funerals of the
Gauls were pompous. Both burned the corpse, but the Celt cast into the
flames the favorite animals, and even the most cherished slaves and
dependents of the master. Vast monuments of stone or piles of earth
were raised above the ashes of the dead. Scattered relics of the Celtic
age are yet visible throughout Europe, in these huge but unsightly
memorials,
The German was not ambitious at the grave. He threw neither garments
nor odors upon the funeral pyre, but the arms and the war-horse of the
departed were burned and buried with him.
The turf was his only sepulchre, the memory of his valor his only
monument. Even tears were forbidden to the