'In blithe habits full oft we, too, agreed that naught else should divide us except death alone; at length this is changed, and, as if it had never been, is now our friendship. To endure enmities man orders me to dwell in the bowers of the forest, under the oak tree in this earthly cave. Cold is this earth-dwelling; I am quite wearied out. Dim are the dells, high up are the mountains, a bitter city of twigs, with briars overgrown, a joyless abode. My friends are in the earth; those loved in life,- the tomb holds them. The grave is guarding, while I above alone am going. Under the oak-tree, beyond this earth-cave,— there I must sit the long summer day.' He is over-brave. He places his happiness in battle and his beauty in death. The coward is drowned in the mud under a hurdle, or is immolated. The true home-life, out of which are the issues of national life, is foreshadowed by the respect with which woman is treated. She inherits property and bequeaths it; associates with the men at their feasts, and is respected. The law surrounds her with guarantees, and accords her protection. The freeman who presses the finger of a freewoman, is liable to a fine of six hundred pence; of twelve hundred, if he touches the arm. 'Almost alone among the barbarians,' says Tacitus, 'they are content with one wife'; then, perhaps with a bitter thought of Rome, 'No one in Germany laughs at vice, nor do they call it the fashion to corrupt and be corrupted.' A chivalric sense of delicacy, indeed, we may not expect. She attends to the indoor and outdoor work, while her husband dozes in a half stupor by the fire. His companion in war, she is his drudge in peace. As little may we look for the finer instincts of the womanly nature. Brynhild compels her suitors to contend with her in the games of spear-throwing, leaping, and stone-hurling, under penalty of death in case of defeat. Atle's wife kills her children, and one day, on his return from the carnage, gives him their hearts to eat, served in honey, and laughs as she tells him on what he has fed. Devotion there is, stronger than life or death, and grief too deep for tears. With a fierce kind of joy, the maid expires on the grave of her lover. Balder's wife accompanies him to the Death-kingdom; and while he sends his ring to Odin, she sends as final remembrance her thimble to Freyja. Loke's wife stands by his side, and receives the venom-drops, as they fall, in a cup which she empties as often as it is filled. The Celt is gay, emotional, easily elevated and as easily depressed. He knows not how to plod, would leap to results, has a passion for color and form. The Teuton is steady, is not dazzled by show, looks more to the inner fact of things. It inspires the one to be addressed in the words of Napoleon,— 'Soldiers, from the summits of yonder Pyramids, forty ages behold you;" it nerves the other to be told in the severe phrase of Nelson, England expects every man to do his duty.' What sentiment is to the one, interest is to the other. If, again, the Teuton has less of brilliancy than the Norman, he has more of patient strength. If he is less passionate, he is more reflective. If he is less voluble, he has the deep conviction and the indomitable will that have preserved his continuity through all revolutionary changes, and made him the most irresistible force in European politics. If he is less the artist of the beautiful, he is more inclined to the serious and sublime. Did ever any people form so tragic a conception of life, get so free and direct a glance into the deeps of thought, or banish so completely from its dreams the sweetness of enjoyment and the softness of pleasure? Here is the shadow, of which the Christian ideal is the substance. Do but consider the singular adaptation of this soil for the reception of the new faith. Back in the days of heathendom we may find the first suggestion of the spirit which led to the Reformation of an after age- the revolt against the sensuous worship of Rome - when Tacitus says of the old Germanic tribes that they do not consider it consistent with the grandeur of celestial beings to confine the gods within walls, or to liken them to the form of any human countenance. They consecrate woods and groves, and they apply the names of deities to the abstraction which they see only with the spiritual eye. This feeling of a mysterious infinity, of the dark Beyond, this sincerity of personal and original sentiment, predisposes the mind to Christianity; it makes the supreme distinction between races, as between great souls and little souls. Gregory had seen slaves in the market at Rome, and their faces were beautiful. He was told they were heathen boys from the Isle of Britain. Sorry to think that forms so fair should have no light within, he asked what was the name of their nation. 'Angles,' he was told. 'Angles!' said Gregory; 'they have the faces of Angels, and they ought to be made fellow-heirs of the Angels in Heaven. But of what prov 1 The Celt is the spiritual progenitor of the Frenchman. ince are they?' 'Deira,' said the merchant. 'De ira!' said Gregory; 'then they must be delivered from the wrath'— in Latin de ira-'of God.' 'And what is the name of their king?' ‘Ælla.' 'Ella! then Alleluia shall be sung in his land.' Presently Roman missionaries bearing a silver cross with an image of Christ came in procession chanting a litany. In the council of the king, the High-Priest of Odin declared that the old gods were powerless: 'For there is no man in thy land, O King, who hath served all our gods more truly than I, yet there be many who are richer and greater, and to whom thou showest more favor; whereas, if our gods were good for anything, they would rather forewarn me who have been so zealous to serve them. Wherefore let us hearken to what these men say, and learn what their law is; and if we find it to be better than our own, let us serve their God and worship Him.' This is the profit-and-loss estimate—not yet extinct among us— of things divine, contracting the horizon of life within the narrow circle of material interests. But in that assembly of wise men was another, of finer mould, whose eyes, lifted from the dust, could see the stars. Then a chief rose and said: 'You remember, it may be, O King, that which sometimes happens in winter when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, and without is rain, snow, and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across the hall; he enters by one door and leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant to him he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather; but the moment is brief,- the bird flies away in the twinkling of an eye, and he passes from winter to winter. Such, methinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while; but what is the time which comes after-the time which was before? We know not. If then, this new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater certaintywhence man cometh and whither he goethit were well that we should regard it.' 1 Henceforth the war-gods are blotted out, the passions which created them wane; manly and moral instincts increase; new ideas take root; and a literature begins whose inspiration and soul, even to the latest generation, while it images the mingled and many-colored web of mortal experience, are essentially the God-idea-this longing after an Infinite which sense cannot touch, but reverence alone can feel-this wonder and sorrow concerning life and death which are the inheritance of the Saxon soul from the days of its first sea-kings. In this year (597),' says the Chronicle, 'Gregorius the Pope sent into Britain Augustinus with very many monks who gospelled God's word to the English folk. That is, they preached or taught,' the Gospel - the good spell or tale, the good news of what God had done for others and would do for them. Though the Christian faith had not failed among the Britons of Wales, the British priests were not likely to try to convert their mortal enemies, the Anglo-Saxons, nor were the latter likely to listen to them. The Scots (Irish) helped much in the good work afterwards, but had nothing to do with it in the beginning. Results.-The English people, it is thus seen, is a composite nation, uniting in its children the elements which, separately, in the intellectual development of Europe, have shown themselves most efficient in all great and worthy achievements. But of this British, Roman, Saxon, Danish, Norman blood, in fulfilment of the decrees of an overruling Providence, is formed the English nation—a nation that has preserved its free spirit under foreign domination and domestic oppression-a nation that has upheld, with ever increasing strength, the principle that power is derived from the governed for the general good-a nation that in literature and life has furnished the moral pioneers and teachers of the world. Its body, its substance, is Saxon, which receives first the Celt, with his bold imagination and self-sacrificing zeal; then the Dane, with his tacit rage and adventurous maritime spirit; then the Norman, with his flexible genius, his trickery, his subtlety, his drawing-room polish, and his keen sense of enjoyment. Herein consists its true greatness, which comes of no transfusion,- its energetic sense of truth, its assertion of the right of individual liberty, its resolute habit of looking to the end, its deep power of love and its grand power of will. We may therefore expect from this blending of diverse parts a many-sided intellectual progress and a wide variety of individual character, the multifariousness of Shakespeare, the austerity of Milton, the materialism of Spencer, the transcendentalism of Emerson, the grace of Addison, the solidity of Johnson, the oddity of Swift, the sadness and madness of Byron. CHAPTER II. FORMING OF THE LANGUAGE. Words are the sounds of the heart.-Chinese Proverb. Definition.-Speech is the utterance of sounds which usage has made the representatives of ideas. When, in any community, the same sounds are customarily associated with the same ideas, the expression of these sounds by the speaker renders his ideas intelligible to the hearer. Man possesses in the organs of utterance-though he seldom thinks of it, or forgets the blessing because it is given-a musical instrument which is at once a harp, an organ, and a flute; an instrument on which Nature gives him the mastery of a finished performer. How its notes are struck, so as to express in coördination the many-colored world without and the shadowworld within, is the mystery of language. This, however, is the observed phenomenon: a person having a thought, and wishing to awaken a corresponding thought in the mind of another, emits, at stated intervals, a portion of his breath, modified by certain movements of the vocal organs; these movements are transmitted to the atmosphere, and thence to the ear of the listener, producing there vibrations identical with the original; then, through the agency of instinct, memory, and invention, the two have the same thought. A result reached without any conscious effort, and therefore seemingly simple and commonplace, yet seen, on reflection, to be truly wonderful. Short as is the reach of its pulse, vanishing as are its undulations, by that fluid air, articulated into living words, man graves on the rock or prints in the book the records of his outward history and his inner soul, in symbols more enduring than Babylonian palace or Egyptian pyramid. Origin. Whether man was the special creation of God or was developed from inarticulate creatures, it would seem evident |