stead, in Lowestoft and Totness; and garth, a yard, in Applegarth and Fishguard. All these and beck, a brook; force, a waterfall; dale, German thal, a valley; and holm, an island, existing as separate words or in composition, and entering before the Norman Conquest, we call Scandinavian of the First Period.

VIII. Anglo-Saxon Literature. The prose consists chiefly of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Alfred's rendering of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the Angles and Saxons and of Boethius's De Consolatione Philosophie, Homilies, and Translations of the Gospels, and the Laws of Æthelbirht and Alfred; the poetry is found mainly in Beowulf (the Anglo-Saxon Iliad), such fragments as the Traveller's Song and the Fight at Finnsburg, Cædmon's Bible Epics, Cynewulf's Christ and Elene, the Harrowing of Hell, some psalms and hymns and secular lyrics.

The poetry is rhythmical. Each line is broken into two sections; each section, March thinks, with four rhythm accents. It is characterized by alliteration, the perfect line having three alliterating syllables-two in the first section and one in the second.

Anglo-Saxon poetry, hardly thirty thousand lines in all, has been preserved in part in two manuscripts-the Exeter Book and the Vercelli Book-the latter found in 1832, in Italy.

Considered as literature, Anglo-Saxon prose and poetry are interesting chiefly to the student, and have had little influence on English writers; looked at lexically and grammatically, they are invaluable.

The glorious period of the Anglo-Saxons was Alfred's reign, 871-901; their decline in art and in arms begins soon after. "The specific causes of their decay we are unable to

assign," says George P. Marsh, "but it is evident that . the people and their literature were in a state of languishing depression which was enlivened and cheered by no symptoms of returning life and vigor." The downfall of the Saxon Commonwealth was not caused, only hastened, by the Normans.

CHAPTER II.

THE NORMAN CONQUEST AND THE NEW TONGUE.

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IX. The Norman Conquest.-The Normans, or Northmen, were originally of the Norse, or Scandinavian, branch of the Teutonic race. They were men of action, enterprising merchants, navigators, soldiers of fortune, leading the van of every battle from Norway to Byzantium." Breaking from the restraints of a power that was consolidating the Scandinavian kingdoms, they boldly ventured forth, conquered the Shetland Isles, the Orkneys, and the Hebrides, founded the kingdom of Caithness in Scotland, settled Iceland, discovered Greenland, and colonized Vinland, supposed to be on the coast of New-England.

In 911, Rolf, or Rollo, the Ganger, with his band of vikings, got a footing in the fertile valley of the Seine. This province of Normandy he received as a fief from Charles the Simple, became his vassal with the title of duke, and married his daughter. The Normans were brought under French law and customs, became Christians, adopted the French language, married into French families, and caught the French spirit.

In 1066, the childless Edward the Confessor died, and Harold, his brother-in-law, succeeded him. But William, seventh Duke of Normandy, whose aunt, Emma, had been married to Ethelred II. of England, claimed the throne by hereditary right and by the promise of both Edward and

Harold, and set sail with thirty thousand followers for the coast of England. On October 14, 1066, he met and defeated Harold on the slope of Senlac, near Hastings, and soon after was crowned king at Westminster. This was the only conquest-and British soil has throbbed to the "drums and tramplings" of four-that reached down to the people of the island and in time thoroughly leavened them. But the admixture of new blood and another spirit with theirs proved the most signal blessing that ever befell them. We can call it no less than their regeneration. It made the English nation of to-day, the English language, and the English literature.

To his Teutonic ancestry the modern Englishman owes his love of justice and fair play, his honesty, his religious nature, his physical robustness and intellectual sturdiness, his doggedness of purpose, his strong good sense, his love of liberty, his fondness for facts, and his firm grip upon the real. To his French lineage—and we must remember that, though originally Teutonic, the Normans had been metamorphosed by their life in France; and that, though many of French extraction accompanied William the Conqueror, they were to those who followed after but as the prologue to the play—the modern Englishman owes his manner, his tact, his sense of proportion, his genius for administration, his poetic skill, and his artistic nature. In him the two races have blended most happily, forming a composite better than either component, greater even than both elements while separated.

The changes which Anglo-Saxon underwent because of this conquest are vital, we will say fundamental; they amount to a revolution. A change of name is needed to mark this. We have purposely refrained from calling the

dominant people of the island, or their speech, before 1066, by any other term than Anglo-Saxon. But after the union of the peoples and of the languages, a new word is needed to denote new things; and this term we have in the word English. As we use it, English denotes always the race resulting from the marriage of the two peoples, or the speech resulting from the union of the two tongues.

X. The Two Peoples Side by Side.-But we must guard against supposing that either the two peoples or the two tongues were welded into one instantaneously. They grew together, and this growth was slow.

Any yoke of conquest would be galling to the libertyloving Anglo-Saxons, but there are special reasons why this was so. The conqueror was of alien blood; and national animosity existed between him and the conquered. William's conquest was ruthless, especially in the north. He ravaged the country, destroyed harvests, cattle, the very implements of husbandry, burned town and village, and slew the inhabitants or drove them across the border. He confiscated the entire soil. He parceled out the land, upon condition of military service, among a score or more of great vassals, among some hundreds of inferior crown-vassals, and among the higher clergy. "The meanest Norman rose to wealth and power in the new dominion of the Duke." By this establishment of a modified feudal system, the mass of the population were reduced to a species of serfdom, became mere tillers of the soil. Shoals of Norman ecclesiastics came across the Channel, and the people were forced to receive even religious consolation from foreigners. Another language than their own prevailed in all places of authority in the palace and among the nobility, in law courts, in the schools. To their painful consciousness of