Roman Empire, we have to study the new aspects taken
by the sociable wants of the masses in the Middle Ages,
and especially in the mediæval guilds and the mediæval
city.

Far from being the fighting animals they have often been
compared to, the barbarians of the first centuries of our era
(like so many Mongolians, Africans, Arabs, and so on, who still
continue in the same barbarian stage) invariably preferred peace
to war. With the exception of a few tribes which had been
driven during the great migrations into unproductive deserts or
highlands, and were thus compelled periodically to prey upon
their better-favoured neighbours--apart from these, the great
bulk of the Teutons, the Saxons, the Celts, the Slavonians, and
so on, very soon after they had settled in their newly-conquered
abodes, reverted to the spade or to their herds. The earliest
barbarian codes already represent to us societies composed of
peaceful agricultural communities, not hordes of men at war
with each other. These barbarians covered the country with
villages and farmhouses; ¹ they cleared the forests, bridged the
torrents, and colonized the formerly quite uninhabited wilder-
ness; and they left the uncertain warlike pursuits to brother-
hoods, scholœ, or "trusts" of unruly men, gathered round
temporary chieftains, who wandered about, offering their
adventurous spirit, their arms, and their knowledge of warfare
for the protection of populations, only too anxious to be left in
peace. The warrior bands came and went, prosecuting their
family feuds; but the great mass continued to till the soil,
taking but little notice of their would-be rulers, so long as they
did not interfere with the independence of their village com-
munities. ² The new occupiers Of Europe evolved the systems
of land tenure and soil culture which are still in force with
hundreds of millions of men; they worked out their systems of
compensation for wrongs, instead of the old tribal blood-revenge;
they learned the first rudiments of industry; and while they
fortified their villages with palisaded walls, or erected towers
and earthen forts whereto to repair in case of a new invasion,

-119-