CHAPTER VIII.

FOR in very truth it is come indispensable in it.

NEW ERAS.

a 'new Era ;' a new Practice has beOne has heard so often of new eras, new and newest eras, that the word has grown rather empty of late. Yet new eras do come; there is no fact surer than that they have come more than once. And always with a change of era, with a change of intrinsic conditions, there had to be a change of practice and outward relations brought about,-if not peaceably, then by violence; for brought about it had to be, there could no rest come till then. How many eras and epochs, not noted at the moment;-which indeed is the blessedest condition of epochs, that they come quietly, making no proclamation of themselves, and are only visible long after a Cromwell Rebellion, a French Revolution, striking on the Horologe of Time,' to tell all mortals what o'clock it has become, are too expensive, if one could help it!

In a strange rhapsodic History of the Teuton Kindred (Geschichte der Teutschen Sippschaft), not yet translated into our language, we have found a Chapter on the Eras of England, which, were there room for it, would be instructive in this place. We shall crave leave to excerpt some pages; partly as a relief from the too near vexations of our own rather sorrowful Era; partly as calculated to throw, more or less obliquely, some degree of light on the meanings of that. The Author is anonymous; but we have heard him called the Herr Professor Sauerteig, and indeed think we know him under that name:

Who shall say what work and works this England has yet 'to do? For what purpose this land of Britain was created, set like a jewel in the encircling blue of Ocean; and this Tribe of

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'Saxons, fashioned in the depths of Time," on the shores of the 'Black Sea" or elsewhere, "out of Harzgebirge rock" or what'ever other material, was sent travelling hitherward?/No man 'can say it was for a work, and for works, incapable of announce'ment in words. Thou seest them there, these works; part of 'them stand done, and visible to the eye; even these thou canst 'not name: how much less the others still matter of prophecy only They live and labour there, these twenty million Saxon 'men; they have been born into this mystery of life out of the 'darkness of Past Time:-how changed now since the first Fa'ther and first Mother of them set forth, quitting the Tribe of Theuth, with passionate farewell, under questionable auspices; on 6 scanty bullock-cart, if they had even bullocks and a cart; with 'axe and hunting-spear, to subdue a portion of our common Planet! 'This Nation now has cities and seedfields, has spring-vans, draywaggons, Long-acre carriages, nay railway trains; has coined'money, exchange-bills, laws, books, war-fleets, spinning jennies, เ warehouses and West-India Docks see what it has built and 'done, what it can and will yet build and do! These umbrageous 'pleasure-woods, green meadows, shaven stubble-fields, smooth'sweeping roads; these high-domed cities, and what they hold and 'bear; this mild Good-morrow which the stranger bids thee, equitable, nay forbearant if need were, judicially calm and law'observing towards thee a stranger, what work has it not cost? 'How many brawny arms, generation after generation, sank down 'wearied; how many noble hearts, toiling while life lasted, and 'wise heads that wore themselves dim with scanning and discern'ing, before this waste Whitecliff, Albion so-called, with its other 'Cassiterides Tin Islands, became a BRITISH EMPIRE! The stream 'of World-History has altered its complexion; Romans are dead 'out, English are come in. The red broad mark of Romanhood, 'stamped ineffaceably on that Chart of Time, has disappeared 'from the present, and belongs only to the past. England plays its part; England too has a mark to leave, and we will hope none of the least significant. Of a truth, whosoever had, with 'the bodily eye, seen Hengst and Horsa mooring on the mud'beach of Thanet, on that spring morning of the Year 449; and 'then, with the spiritual eye, looked forward to New York, Cal

'cutta, Sidney Cove, across the ages and the oceans; and thought 'what Wellingtons, Washingtons, Shakspears, Miltons, Watts, 'Arkwrights, William Pitts and Davie Crocketts had to issue from 'that business, and do their several taskwords so, he would have 'said, those leather-boats of Hengst's had a kind of cargo in them! 'A genealogic Mythus superior to any in the old Greek, to almost 'any in the old Hebrew itself; and not a Mythus either, but every 'fibre of it fact. An Epic Poem was there, and all manner of 'poems; except that the Poet has not yet made his appearance.'

'Six centuries of obscure endeavour,' continues Sauerteig, 'which to read Historians, you would incline to call mere obscure 'slaughter, discord, and misendeavour; of which all that the hu'man memory, after a thousand readings, can remember, is that 'it resembled, what Milton names it, the "flocking and fighting 'of kites and crows:" this, in brief, is the history of the Hep'tarchy or Seven Kingdoms. Six centuries; a stormy springtime, if there ever was one, for a Nation. Obscure fighting of 'kites and crows, however, was not the History of it; but was 'only what the dim Historians of it saw good to record. Were 'not forests felled, bogs drained, fields made arable, towns built, 'laws made, and the Thought and Practice of men in many ways 'perfected? Venerable Bede had got a language which he could now not only speak, but spell and put on paper: think what 'lies in that. Bemurmured by the German sea-flood swinging 'slow with sullen roar against those hoarse Northumbrian rocks, 'the venerable man set down several things in a legible manner. 'Or was the smith idle, hammering only war-tools? He had 'learned metallurgy, stithy-work in general; and made plough'shares withal, and adzes and mason-hammers. Castra, Caesters 'or Chesters, Dons, Tons (Zauns, Inclosures or Towns), not a few, 'did they not stand there; of burnt brick, of timber, of lath-and'clay; sending up the peaceable smoke of hearths? England 'had a History then too; though no Historian to write it. Those flockings and fightings," sad inevitable necessities, were the ex'pensive tentative steps towards some capability of living and 'working in concert: experiments they were, not always con'clusive, to ascertain who had the might over whom, the right ' over whom.

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'M. Thierry has written an ingenious Book, celebrating with 'considerable pathos the fate of the Saxons, fallen under that 'fierce-hearted Conquestor, Acquirer or Conqueror, as he is named. 'M. Thierry professes to have a turn for looking at that side of 'things: the fate of the Welsh too moves him; of the Celts ge'nerally, whom a fiercer race swept before them into the mountain'ous nooks of the West, whither they were not worth following. 'Noble deeds, according to M. Thierry, were done by these un'successful men, heroic sufferings undergone; which it is a 'pious duty to rescue from forgetfulness. True, surely! A 'tear at least is due to the unhappy it is right and fit that there 'should be a man to assert that lost cause too, and see what can 'still be made of it. Most right-and yet on the whole, taking ' matters on that great scale, what can we say but that the cause 'which pleased the gods has in the end to please Cato also? 'Cato cannot alter it; Cato will find that he cannot at bottom 'wish to alter it. Might and Right do differ frightfully from 'hour to hour; but give them centuries to try it in, they are 'found to be identical. Whose land was this of Britain? 'who made it, His and no other's it was and is. Who of God's 'creatures had right to live in it? The wolves and bisons? Yes 'they; till one with a better right showed himself. The Celt, ""aboriginal savage of Europe," as a snarling antiquary names 'him, arrived, pretending to have a better right; and did accord'ingly not without pain to the bisons, make good the same. He 'had a better right to that piece of God's land; namely a better 'might to turn it to use ;-a might to settle himself there, at 'least, and try what use he could turn it to. The bisons disap'peared; the Celts took possession, and tilled.

God's

Forever, was it 'to be? Alas, Forever is not a category that can establish itself in this world of Time. A world of Time, by the very defini'tion of it, is a world of mortality and mutability, of Beginning 'and Ending. No property is eternal but God the Maker's: 'whom Heaven permits to take possession, his is the right; 'heaven's sanction is such permission,-while it lasts: nothing 'more can be said. Why does that hyssop grow there, in the Because the whole universe, sufficiently oc'cupied otherwise, could not hitherto prevent its growing! It has

'chink of the wall?

'the might and the right. By the same great law do Roman Empires establish themselves, Christian Religions promulgate 'themselves, and all extant Powers bear rule. The strong thing 'is the just thing: this thou wilt find throughout in our world;— 'as indeed was God and Truth the Maker of our world, or was 'Satan and Falsehood?

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One proposition widely current as to this Norman Conquest is of a Physiologic sort: That the conquerors and conquered here 'were of different races; nay that the Nobility of England is 'still, to this hour, of a somewhat different blood from the com'monalty, their fine Norman features contrasting so pleasantly 'with the coarse Saxon ones of the others. God knows, there are coarse enough features to be seen among the commonalty of that 'country; but if the Nobility's be finer, it is not their Norman'hood that can be the reason. Does the above Physiologist re'flect who those same Normans, Northmen, originally were? Baltic Saxons, and what other miscellany of Lurdanes, Jutes and Deutsch Pirates from the East-sea marshes would join them ' in plunder of France! If living three centuries longer in Heathenism, sea-robbery, and the unlucrative fishing of ambergris 'could ennoble them beyond the others, then were they ennobled. The Normans were Saxons who had learned to speak French. No: by Thor and Wodan, the Saxons were all as noble as was 'needful-shaped, says the Mythus, "from the rock of the Harzgebirge;" brother-tribes being made of clay, wood, water, or what other material might be going! A stubborn, taciturn, 'sulky, indomitable rock-made race of men; as the figure they 'cut in all quarters, in the cane-brake of Arkansas, in the Ghauts of the Himmalayha, no less than in London City, in Warwick 'or Lancaster County, does still abundantly manifest.'

To this English People in World-History, there have been, shall I prophesy, Two grand tasks assigned? Huge-looming through the dim tumult of the always incommensurable Present 'Time, outlines of two tasks disclose themselves: the grand In'dustrial task of conquering some half or more of this Terraqueous Planet for the use of man; then secondly, the grand Constitu