s been
as brief, till all these superimposed races have blended into one, to
form the British nation, the most widespread race of modern times. For

"Britain's might and Britain's right
And the brunt of British spears"[5]

are not the boast of the English race alone. No man in England now can
boast of unmixed descent, but must perforce trace his family back
through many a marriage of Frank, and Norman, and Saxon, and Dane, and
Roman, and Celt, and even Iberian, back to prehistoric man--

"Scot and Celt and Norman and Dane,
With the Northman's sinew and heart and brain,
And the Northman's courage for blessing or bane,
Are England's heroes too."[6]

When Tennyson sang his greeting at the coming of Alexandra,

"Saxon or Dane or Norman we,
Teuton or Celt or whatever we be,"

he was only recognising a truth which no boast of pure birth can
cover--the truth that the modern Englishman is a compound of many
races, with many characteristics; and if we would understand him, we
must seek the clue to the riddle in early England and Scotland and
Ireland and Wales, while even France adds her share of enlightenment
towards the solution of the riddle.

"The Saxon force, the Celtic fire,
These are thy manhood's heritage."[7]

Britain, as far as we can trace men in our island, was first inhabited
by cave-men, who have left no history at all. In the course of ages
they passed away before the Iberians or Ivernians, who came from the
east, and bore a striking resemblance to the Basques. It may be that
some Mongolian tribe, wandering west, drawn by the instinct which has
driven most race-migrations westward, sent offshoots north and
south--one to brave the dangers of the sea and inhabit Britain and
Ireland, one to cross the Pyrenees and remain sheltered in their deep
ravines; or it may be that Basques from the Pyrenees, daring the
storms of the Bay of Biscay in their frail coracles, ventured to the
shores of Britain. Short and dark were these sturdy voyagers,
harsh-featured and long-headed, worshipping the powers of Nature with
mysterious and cruel rites of human sacrifice, holding beliefs in
totems and ancestor-worship and in the superiority of high descent
claimed through the mother to that claimed through the father. When
the stronger and more civilised Celt came he drove before him these
little dark men, he enslaved their survivors or wedded their women,
and in his turn fell into slaver