This last set of causes are those which specially distinguish the
histories of Eastern and of Western Europe; a set of causes which,
though exactly twelve hundred years old,[6] are still fresh and living,
and which are the special causes which have aggravated the special
difficulties of the last five hundred years. In Western Europe, though
we have had plenty of political conquests, we have had no national
migrations since the days of the Teutonic settlements--at least, if we
may extend these last so as to take in the Scandinavian settlements in
Britain and Gaul. The Teuton has pressed to the East at the expense of
the Slav and the Old-Prussian: the borders between the Romance and the
Teutonic nations in the West have fluctuated; but no third set of
nations has come in, strange alike to the Roman and the Teuton and to
the whole Aryan family. As the Huns of Attila showed themselves in
Western Europe as passing ravagers, so did the Magyars at a later day;
so did the Ottoman Turks in a day later still, when they besieged Vienna
and laid waste the Venetian mainland.
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