The gentler sex became their counsellors in difficulty,
and their physicians in sickness--their companions rather than their
mistresses,--the objects of their veneration rather than the purveyors
of their pleasures. Although in after years, the national migrations of
the Goths changed the national temperament, although their ancient
mythology was exchanged for the worship of Christ, this prevailing
sentiment of their earliest existence as a people never entirely
deserted them; but, with different modifications and in different forms,
maintained much of its old supremacy through all changes of manners and
varieties of customs, descending finally to their posterity among the
present nations of Europe, in the shape of that established code of
universal courtesy to women, which is admitted to be one great
distinguishing mark between the social systems of the inhabitants of
civilised and uncivilised lands.
This powerful and remarkable ascendancy of the woman over the man, among
the Goths, could hardly be more strikingly displayed than in the
instance of Hermanric.
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