assembly elected the village magistrates and decided upon all important matters both of peace and war.  At the full of the moon it was usually convoked.  The nobles and the popular delegates arrived at irregular intervals, for it was an inconvenience arising from their liberty, that two or three days were often lost in waiting for the delinquents.  All state affairs were in the hands of this fierce democracy.  The elected chieftains had rather authority to persuade than power to command.

The Gauls were an agricultural people.  They were not without many arts of life.  They had extensive flocks and herds; and they even 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.