Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated from each other by seas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldom mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished enemies were all members of one great federation.

ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire so far distant from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same atrocities which had attended the victory of the Saxon over the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the Dane. Civili. sation, just as it began to rise, was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the eastern shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supported by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the dominion of the

Cruel massa

The

Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A regular communication was opened between our shores and that part of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and policy were yet discernible. Many whole realm. The struggle between noble monuments which have since the two fierce Teutonic breeds lasted been destroyed or defaced still retained through six generations. Each was their pristine magnificence; and tra- alternately paramount. vellers, to whom Livy and Sallust were cres followed by cruel retribution, prounintelligible, might gain from the vinces wasted, convents plundered, and Roman aqueducts and temples some cities rased to the ground, make up the faint notion of Roman history. The greater part of the history of those evil dome of Agrippa, still glittering with days. At length the North ceased to bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not send forth a constant stream of fresh yet deprived of its columns and statues, depredators; and from that time the the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet de- mutual aversion of the races began to graded into a quarry, told to the rude subside. Intermarriage became freEnglish pilgrims some part of the story quent. The Danes learned the religion of that great civilised world which had of the Saxons; and thus one cause of passed away. The islanders returned, deadly animosity was removed. with awe deeply impressed on their Danish and Saxon tongues, both diahalf opened minds, and told the won- lects of one widespread language, were dering inhabitants of the hovels of blended together. But the distinction London and York that, near the grave between the two nations was by no of St. Peter, a mighty race, now ex- means effaced, when an event took place tinct, had piled up buildings which which prostrated both, in common slawould never be dissolved till the judg-very and degradation, at the feet of a ment day. Learning followed in the third people. train of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout Europe. Such was the state of our country when, in the ninth century, began the last great migration of the northern barbarians. During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour invasions. forth innumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No country suffered so much from these invaders as England. Her coast lay near to the

Danish

The Normans were then the foremost

race of Christendom. Their The Norvalour and ferocity had made mans. them conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their sails were long the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their arms were repeatedly carried far into the heart of the Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the walls of Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their favourite element. In that province they founded a mighty state.

One

which gradually extended its influence | Every country, from the Atlantic Ocean over the neighbouring principalities of to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies Britanny and Maine. Without laying of their discipline and valour. aside that dauntless valour which had Norman knight, at the head of a handbeen the terror of every land from the ful of warriors, scattered the Celts of Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans ra- Connaught. Another founded the mopidly acquired all, and more than all, narchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the the knowledge and refinement which emperors both of the East and of the they found in the country where they West fly before his arms. A third, the settled. Their courage secured their Ulysses of the first crusade, was interritory against foreign invasion. They vested by his fellow soldiers with the established internal order, such as had sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, long been unknown in the Frank em- the Tancred whose name lives in the pire. They embraced Christianity; and great poem of Tasso, was celebrated with Christianity they learned a great through Christendom as the bravest part of what the clergy had to teach. and most generous of the deliverers of They abandoned their native speech, the Holy Sepulchre. and adopted the French tongue, in The vicinity of so remarkable a people which the Latin was the predominant early began to produce an effect on the element. They speedily raised their public mind of England. Before the new language to a dignity and import- Conquest, English princes received their ance which it had never before pos-education in Normandy. English sees sessed. They found it a barbarous and English estates were bestowed on jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The

Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems to have been to the court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Versailles long afterwards was to the court of Charles the Second.

quest.

The

polite luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the coarse voracity The battle of Hastings, and the events and drunkenness of his Saxon and which followed it, not only The NorDanish neighbours. He loved to dis-placed a Duke of Normandy on man Conplay his magnificence, not in huge piles the English throne, but gave of food and hogsheads of strong drink, up the whole population of England to but in large and stately edifices, rich the tyranny of the Norman race. armour, gallant horses, choice falcons, subjugation of a nation by a nation has well ordered tournaments, banquets de- seldom, even in Asia, been more comlicate rather than abundant, and wines plete. The country was portioned out remarkable rather for their exquisite among the captains of the invaders. flavour than for their intoxicating power. Strong military institutions, closely conThat chivalrous spirit, which has exer- nected with the institution of property, cised so powerful an influence on the enabled the foreign conquerors to oppolitics, morals, and manners of all the press the children of the soil. A cruel European nations, was found in the penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded highest exaltation among the Norman the privileges, and even the sports, of nobles. Those nobles were distinguished the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, by their graceful bearing and insinuat- though beaten down and trodden under ing address. They were distinguished foot, still made its sting felt. Some also by their skill in negotiation, and bold men, the favourite heroes of our by a natural eloquence which they as- oldest ballads, betook themselves to the siduously cultivated. It was the boast woods, and there, in defiance of curfew of one of their historians that the Nor- laws and forest laws, waged a predatory man gentlemen were orators from the war against their oppressors. Assassicradle. But their chief fame was de nation was an event of daily occurrence. rived from their military exploits. Many Normans suddenly disappeared,

leaving no trace. The corpses of many | shame.

The Conqueror and his dewere found bearing the marks of vio-scendants to the fourth generation were lence. Death by torture was denounced not Englishmen most of them were against the murderers, and strict search born in France: they spent the greater was made for them, but generally in part of their lives in France: their vain; for the whole nation was in a ordinary speech was French: almost conspiracy to screen them. It was at every high office in their gift was filled length thought necessary to lay a heavy by a Frenchman: every acquisition fine on every Hundred in which a person which they made on the Continent esof French extraction should be found tranged them more and more from the slain; and this regulation was followed population of our island. One of the up by another regulation, providing that ablest among them indeed attempted every person who was found slain should to win the hearts of his English subjects be supposed to be a Frenchman, unless by espousing an English princess. But, he were proved to be a Saxon. by many of his barons, this marriage was regarded as a marriage between a white planter and a quadroon girl would now be regarded in Virginia. In history he is known by the honourable surname of Beauclerc; but, in his own time, his own countrymen called him by a Saxon nickname, in contemptuous allusion to his Saxon connection.

During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there is, to speak strictly, no English history. The French Kings of England rose, indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of all neighbouring nations. They conquered Ireland. They received the homage of Scotland. By their valour, by their policy, by their fortunate ma- Had the Plantagenets, as at one time trimonial alliances, they became far seemed likely, succeeded in uniting all more powerful on the Continent than France under their government, it is their liege lords the Kings of France. probable that England would never Asia, as well as Europe, was dazzled have had an independent existence. by the power and glory of our tyrants. Her princes, her lords, her prelates, Arabian chroniclers recorded with un- would have been men differing in race willing admiration the fall of Acre, the and language from the artisans and the defence of Joppa, and the victorious tillers of the earth. The revenues of march to Ascalon; and Arabian mo- her great proprietors would have been thers long awed their infants to silence spent in festivities and diversions on with the name of the lionhearted Plan- the banks of the Seine. The noble tagenet. At one time it seemed that language of Milton and Burke would the line of Hugh Capet was about to have remained a rustic dialect, without end as the Merovingian and Carlovin- a literature, a fixed grammar, or a fixed gian lines had ended, and that a single orthography, and would have been congreat monarchy would spread from the temptuously abandoned to the use of Orkneys to the Pyrenees. So strong boors. No man of English extraction an association is established in most would have risen to eminence, except minds between the greatness of a sove-by becoming in speech and habits a reign and the greatness of the nation Frenchman. which he rules, that almost every historian of England has expatiated with a sentiment of exultation on the power and splendour of her foreign masters, and has lamented the decay of that power and splendour as a calamity to our country. This is, in truth, as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of our time to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis the Fourteenth, and to speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic regret and

England

mandy.

England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which Separaher historians have generally tion of represented as disastrous. Her and Nor interest was so directly opposed to the interest of her rulers that she had no hope but in their errors and misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of her first six French Kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities

cally intermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been carried farther than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements were melted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is certain that, when John became King, the distinction between Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was, "May I become an Englishman!" His ordinary form of indignant denial was, "Do you take me for an Englishman?" The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years later was proud of the English name.

of his father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had the King of France at the same time been as incapable as all the other successors of Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendency in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France, for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a prince of great firmness and ability. On the other hand England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John was driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make their election between the island and the continent. The sources of the noblest rivers Shut up by the sea with the people which spread fertility over continents, whom they had hitherto oppressed and and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, despised, they gradually came to regard are to be sought in wild and barren England as their country, and the mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down English as their countrymen. The two in maps, and rarely explored by travelraces, so long hostile, soon found that lers. To such a tract the history of our they had common interests and common country during the thirteenth century enemies. Both were alike aggrieved may not unaptly be compared. Sterile by the tyranny of a bad king. Both and obscure as is that portion of our were alike indignant at the favour annals, it is there that we must seek shown by the court to the natives of for the origin of our freedom, our prosPoitou and Aquitaine. The greatgrandsons of those who had fought under William and the greatgrandsons of those who had fought under Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship; and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit.

Amalga

perity, and our glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders, islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared Here commences the history of the with distinctness that constitution English nation. The history which has ever since, through all mation of of the preceding events is the changes, preserved its identity; that history of wrongs inflicted constitution of which all the other free and sustained by various tribes, which constitutions in the world are copies, indeed all dwelt on English ground, and which, in spite of some defects, but which regarded each other with deserves to be regarded as the best aversion such as has scarcely ever ex- under which any great society has ever isted between communities separated yet existed during many ages. Then by physical barriers. For even the it was that the House of Commons, the mutual animosity of countries at war archetype of all the representative aswith each other is languid when com-semblies which now meet, either in the pared with the animosity of nations old or in the new world, held its first which, morally separated, are yet lo- sittings. Then it was that the common

races.

law rose to the dignity of a science, and twelfth century, the conquerors from the rapidly became a not unworthy rival of Continent had regarded the islanders, the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was now retorted by the islanders on was that the courage of those sailors the people of the Continent. Every who manned the rude barks of the yeoman from Kent to Northumberland Cinque Ports first made the flag of Eng-valued himself as one of a race born for land terrible on the seas. Then it was victory and dominion, and looked down that the most ancient colleges which with scorn on the nation before which still exist at both the great national his ancestors had trembled. Even those seats of learning were founded. Then knights of Gascony and Guienne who was formed that language, less musical had fought gallantly under the Black indeed than the languages of the south, Prince were regarded by the English as but in force, in richness, in aptitude for men of an inferior breed, and were conall the highest purposes of the poet, the temptuously excluded from honourable philosopher, and the orator, inferior to and lucrative commands. In no long the tongue of Greece alone. Then too time our ancestors altogether lost sight appeared the first faint dawn of that of the original ground of quarrel. They noble literature, the most splendid and began to consider the crown of France the most durable of the many glories as a mere appendage to the crown of of England. England; and when, in violation of the Early in the fourteenth century the ordinary law of succession, they transamalgamation of the races was all but ferred the crown of England to the complete; and it was soon made mani- House of Lancaster, they seem to have fest, by signs not to be mistaken, that thought that the right of Richard the a people inferior to none existing in the Second to the crown of France passed, world had been formed by the mixture as of course, to that house. The zeal of three branches of the great Teutonic and vigour which they displayed prefamily with each other, and with the sent a remarkable contrast to the torpor aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed, of the French, who were far more deeply scarcely anything in common between interested in the event of the struggle. the England to which John had been The most splendid victories recorded chased by Philip Augustus, and the in the history of the middle ages were England from which the armies of Ed-gained at this time, against great odds, ward the Third went forth to conquer France.

English

on the

A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which conquests the chief object of the English Continent was to establish, by force of arms, a great empire on the Continent. The claim of Edward to the inheritance occupied by the House of Valois was a claim in which it might seem that his subjects were little interested. But the passion for conquest spread fast from the prince to the people. The war differed widely from the wars which the Plantagenets of the twelfth century had waged against the descendants of Hugh Capet. For the success of Henry the Second, or of Richard the First, would have made England a province of France. The effect of the successes of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth was to make France, for a time, a province of England. The disdain with which, in the

by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of which a nation may justly be proud; for they are to be attributed to the moral superiority of the victors, a superiority which was most striking in the lowest ranks. The knights of England found worthy rivals in the knights of France. Chandos encountered an equal foe in Du Guesclin. But France had no infantry that dared to face the English bows and bills. A French king was brought prisoner to London. An English king was crowned at Paris. The banner of Saint George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle, which for a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the English Companies obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands of warriors who let out their weapons for hire to the princes and commonwealths of Italy.