wonted manner of our nation hath been to war under the conduct of women. My blood and birth might challenge some preeminence, as sprung from the roots of most royal descents; but my breath, received from the same air, my body sustained by the same soil, and my glory clouded with imposed ignominies, I disdain all superiority, and, as a fellow in bondage, bear the yoke of oppression with as heavy weight and pressure, if not more... You that have known the freedom of life, will with me confess that liberty,' though in a poor estate, is better than bondage with fetters of gold. . . . Have the Heavens' made us the ends of the world, and not assigned the end of our wrongs? Or hath Nature, among all our free works, created us Britons only for bondage? Why, what are the Romans? Are they more than men, or immortal? Their slain carcasses sacrificed by us, and their putrefied blood corrupting our air, doth tell us they are no gods. Our persons are more tall, our bodies more strong, and our joints better knit than theirs! But you will say they are our conquerors. Indeed, overcome we are, but by ourselves, by our own factions, still giving way to their intrusions. . . . See we not the army of Plautius crouched together like fowls in a storm? If we but consider the number of their forces and the motives of the war, we shall resolve to vanquish or die. It is better worth to fall in honour of liberty, than be exposed again to the outrages of the Romans. This is my resolution, who am but a woman; you who are men may, if you please, live and be slaves.'

Love of bright color is a Celtic passion. Diodorus told how the Gauls wore bracelets and costly finger-rings, gold corselets, dyed tunics flowered with various hues, striped cloaks fastened with a brooch and divided into many parti-colored squares, a taste still represented by the Highland plaid. This joy in the beautiful will display itself, in poetry, in an outpouring of imagery and grace of expression, as in the Cymric' battle-ode of Aneurin:

Have ye seen the tusky boar,

Or the bull with sullen roar,

On surrounding foes advancing?

So Garadawg bore his lance.

.

As the flame's devouring force,
As the whirlwind in its course,
As the thunder's fiery stroke,
Glancing on the shivered oak;
Did the sword of Vedel's mow
The crimson harvest of the foe.'

This fancy, active and bold, is not content to conceive. It must draw and paint, vividly, in detail, as in this glimpse of a Gaelic banquet:

'As the king's people were afterwards at the assembly they saw a couple approaching them,- a woman and a man; larger than the summit of a rock or a mountain was each member of their members; sharper than a shaving-knife the edge of their shins; their heels and hams in front of them. Should a sackful of apples be thrown on their heads, not one of them would fall to the ground, but would stick on the points of the long bristly hair which grew out of their heads; blacker than the coal or darker than the smoke was each of their members; whiter than snow their eyes. A lock of the lower beard was carried round the back of the head, and a lock of the upper beard descended so as to cover the knees; the woman had whiskers, but the man was without whiskers.'

1 Ancient Welsh. 2 Ancient Irish.

But the true artist, with an eye to see, has also a heart to feel. A bard and a prince, who has seen his sons fall in battle, wondering why he should still be left, sings of his youngest and last dead:

'Let the wave break noisily; let it cover the shore when the joined lancers are in battle. O, Gwenn, woe to him who is too old, since he has lost you! Let the wave break noisily; let it cover the plain when the lancers join with a shock. . . . Gwenn has been slain at the ford of Morlas. Here is the bier made for him by his fierce-conquered enemy after he had been surrounded on all sides by the army of the Lloegrians; here is the tomb of Gwenn, the son of the old Llywarch. Sweetly a bird sang on a pear tree above the head of Gwenn, before they covered him with turf; that broke the heart of the old Llywarch.`

This vivacity, this tenderness, this sweet melancholy, will pass, to a certain degree, into English thought.

Danish. The Danes were preeminently a sea-faring and piratical people - vultures who swept the seas in quest of prey. Their sea-kings, who had never slept under the smoky rafters of a roof, who had never drained the ale-horn by an inhabited hearth,' are renowned in the stories of the North. With no territory but the waves, no dwelling but their two-sailed ships, they laughed at the storm, and sang: 'The blast of the tempest aids our oars; the bellowing of heaven, the howling of the thunder, hurts us not; the hurricane is our servant, and drives us whither we wish to go.' In his last hour, the sea-king looks gladly to his immortal feasts 'in the seats of Balder's father,' where we shall drink ale continually from the large hollowed skulls.'

Listen to their table-talk, and from it infer the rest. A youth takes his seat beside the Danish jarl, and is reproached with 'seldom having provided the wolves with hot meat, with never having seen for the whole autumn a raven croaking over the carnage.' But he pacifies her by singing: 'I have marched with my bloody sword, and the raven has followed me. Furiously we fought, the fire passed over the dwellings of men; we have sent to sleep in blood those who kept the gates.'

Here is their code of honor: 'A brave man should attack two, stand firm against three, give ground a little to four, and only retreat from five.' No wonder they were irresistible. Add to this the deeper incitement of an immortality in Valhalla, where they should forever hew each other in bloodless conflict.

When Saxon independence was given up to a Danish king, their character was greatly changed from what it had been during their first invasions. They had embraced the Christian faith, were

centralized, had lost much of their predatory and ferocious spirit. Long settled in England, they gradually became assimilated to the natives, whose laws and language were not radically different from their own. From these sea-wolves, who lived on the pillage of the world, the English will imbibe their maritime enterprise.

Norman.-The Normans, as we have seen, were a Scandinavian tribe with a changed nature,- Christianized, at least in the mediæval sense, and civilized. The peculiar quality of their genius was its suppleness. They intermarried with the French, borrowed the French language, adopted French customs, imitated French thought; and, in a hundred and fifty years after their settlement, were so far cultured as to consider their kinsmen, the Saxons, unlettered and rude.

Transferred to England, they become English. To these they were superior:

1. In refinement of manners. 'The Saxons,' says an old writer, vied with each other in their drinking feats, and wasted their income by day and night in feasting, whilst they lived in wretched hovels; the French and Normans, on the other hand, living inexpensively in their fine large houses, were, besides, refined in, their food and studiously careful in their dress.'

2. In taste, the art of pleasing the eye, and expressing a thought by an outward representation. The Norman architecture, including the circular arch and the rose window with its elegant mouldings, made its appearance. You might see amongst them (the Saxons) churches in every village, and monasteries in the cities, towering on high, and built in a style unknown before.' They were to become the most skilful builders in Europe.

3. In weapons and warlike enterprise. They used the bow, fought on horseback, and were thus prepared for a more nimble and aggressive movement.

4. In intellectual culture. Five hundred and sixty-seven schools were established between the Conquest and the death of King John (1216). In poetry they were relatively cultivated. Another point of excellence was the intelligence of their clergy. The illiteracy of the Saxon was the excuse for banishing him from all valuable ecclesiastical dignities. The Norman bishops and abbots, who gradually supplanted him, were for the most

part of loftier minds than the mailed warriors who elevated them to wealth and authority.

Such were the points of superiority at which the Norman was prepared to contribute new impulses to the national character. In many respects, he was the reverse of the Saxon. In the movement of his intellect, he was prompt and spirited rather than profound. Like the Parisian, he was polite, elegant, graceful, talkative, dainty, superficial. Beauty pleased rather than exalted him. Nature was pretty rather than grand― never mystical. Love was a pastime rather than a devotion. Woman impressed him less by any spiritual transcendence than by a 'vastly becoming smile,' a 'sweet and perfumed breath,' a form 'white as new-fallen snow on a branch.' To show skill and courage for the meed of glory, to win the applause of the ladies, to display magnificence of dress and armor,- such was his desire and study. Here is a picture of the fancies and splendors in which he delights and loses himself. A king, wishing to console his afflicted daughter, proposes to take her to the chase in the following style:

To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare;

And ride, my daughter, in a chair;

It shall be covered with velvet red,

And clothes of fine gold all about your head,

With damask white and azure blue,

Well diapered with lilies new.

Your pommels shall be ended with gold,

Your chains enameled many a fold,

Your mantle of rich degree,

Purple pall and ermine free. . . .

Ye shall have revel, dance, and song;
Little children, great and small,
Shall sing as does the nightingale

A hundred knights, truly told,

Shall play with bowls in alleys cold,
Your disease to drive away....
Forty torches burning bright

At your bridge to bring you light.

Into your chamber they shall you bring
With much mirth and more liking.

Your blankets shall be of fustian,

Your sheets shall be of cloth of Rennes.
Your head sheet shall be of pery pight,
With diamonds set and rubies bright.

When you are laid in bed so soft,

A cage of gold shall hang aloft,
With long paper fair burning,
And cloves that be sweet-smelling,

Frankincense and olibanum,

That when ye sleep the taste may come;
And if ye no rest can take,

All night minstrels for you shall wake.'

What will come of this gallantry, splendor, and pride, when the brilliant flower is engrafted on the homely Saxon stock?

Anglo-Saxon.-Starting from the same Aryan homestead, with the same stock of ideas, with the same manners and customs, the Teuton takes his westward course, and settles chiefly in Germany,

'She of the Danube and the Northern Sea.'

After centuries of separation, these two kindred meet in mist- ' enveloped Britain. But climate, soil, and time have changed their characters and speech. They have forgotten their mutual relationship, and meet like the lion whelps of a common lair — as foes. The Teutonic stream,- that, too, diverged. Into the mud and slime of Holland, into the forests and fens of Denmark, up into the snow-capped mountains of Sweden and Norway, across the surging main into volcanic Iceland, it branched. Danish, Norse, and Saxon, with superficial distinctions—as of Heathen and Christian, or the like—are at bottom one, Teutonic or Germanic. Inland, in the south, away from the sea, was the great division of the High-Germans; near the sea, by the mouths of the Rhine and Elbe, that of the Low-Germans, in whom we have the deeper interest. To these latter belonged the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, whose language, closely resembling modern Dutch, is the plantlet of English. These tribes, known abroad as Saxons,' early spoken of by themselves as Angles or English, have in the more careful historic use of the present been designated as Anglo-Saxons.

The orders of society were the bond and the free. Men became serfs, or slaves, either by capture in battle or by the sentence of outraged law. Over them their master had the power of life and death. He was responsible for them as for his cattle. Rank was revered, and the freemen were divided into earls and ceorls, or Earls and Churls.

1 So called from a short crooked sword, called a seax, carried by the warriors under their loose garments. Thus, Hengist, the Jute, invited to a banquet, instructed his companions to conceal their short swords beneath their garments. At a given signal-Nimed eure Seares, Draw your swords!'-the weapons were plunged into the hearts of their British entertainers.