n, but not with meek acceptance. Perhaps there was little of
spiritual insight in the minds of these Angles and Saxons, little love
of beauty, little care for the amenities of life; but they had a
sturdy loyalty, an uprightness, a brave disregard of death in the
cause of duty, which we can still recognise in modern Englishmen. To
the Saxon belong the tales where

"The warrior kings,
In height and prowess more than human, strive
Again for glory, while the golden lyre
Is ever sounding in heroic ears
Heroic hymns."[11]

When the English (Anglo-Saxons, as we generally call them) had settled
down in England, had united their warring tribes, and developed a
somewhat centralised government, their whole national existence was
imperilled by the incursions of the Danes. Kindred folk to the
Anglo-Saxons were these Danes, these Vikings from Christiania Wik,
these Northmen from Norway or Iceland, whose fame went before them,
and the dread of whom inspired the petition in the old Litany of the
Church, "From the fury of the Northmen, good Lord, deliver us!" Their
fair hair and blue or grey eyes, their tall and muscular frames, bore
testimony to their kinship with the races they harried and plundered,
but their spirit was different from that of the conquered Teutonic
tribes. The Viking _loved_ the sea; it was his summer home, his field
of war and profit. To go "a-summer-harrying" was the usual employment
of the true Viking, and in the winter only could he enjoy domestic
life and the pleasures of the family circle. The rapturous fight with
the elements, in which the Northman lived and moved and had his being,
gave him a strain of ruthless cruelty unlike anything in the more
peaceful Anglo-Saxon character: his disregard of death for himself led
to a certain callousness with regard to human life, and to a certain
enjoyment in inflicting physical anguish. There was an element of Red
Indian ruthlessness in the Viking, which looms large in the story of
the years of Norse ascendancy over Western Europe. Yet there was also
a power of bold and daring action, of reckless valour, of rapid
conception and execution, which contrasted strongly with the slower
and more placid temperament of the Anglo-Saxon, and to this Danish
strain modern Englishmen probably owe the power of initiative, the
love of adventure, and the daring action which have made England the
greatest colonising nation on the earth. The Danish, N