e, by love of adventure, by religion; traders, refugees, exiles,
all have found in her a hospitable shelter and a second home, and all
have come to love the "grey old mother" that counted them among her
sons and grew to think them her own in very truth.

Geographically, also, we must recognise the admixture of races in our
islands. The farthest western borders show most strongly the type of
man whom we can imagine the Iberian to have been: Western Ireland, the
Hebrides, Central and South Wales, and Cornwall are still inhabited by
folk of Iberian descent. The blue-eyed Celt yet dwells in the
Highlands and the greater part of Wales and the Marches--Hereford and
Shropshire, and as far as Worcestershire and Cheshire; still the
Dales of Cumberland, the Fen Country, East Anglia, and the Isle of Man
show traces of Danish blood, speech, manners, and customs; still the
slow, stolid Saxon inhabits the lands south of the Thames from Sussex
to Hampshire and Dorset. The Angle has settled permanently over the
Lowlands of Scotland, with the Celt along the western fringe, and
Flemish blood shows its traces in Pembroke on the one side ("Little
England beyond Wales") and in Norfolk on the other.

With all these nations, all these natures, amalgamated in our own, it
is no wonder that the literature of our isles contains many different
ideals of heroism, changing according to nationality and epoch. Thus
the physical valour of Beowulf is not the same quality as the valour
of Havelok the Dane, though both are heroes of the strong arm; and the
chivalry of Diarmit is not the same as the chivalry of Roland. Again,
religion has its share in changing the ideals of a nation, and
Constantine, the warrior of the Early English poem of "Elene," is far
from being the same in character as the tender-hearted Constantine of
"moral Gower's" apocryphal tale. The law-abiding nature of the
earliest heroes, whose obedience to their king and their priest was
absolute, differs almost entirely from the lawlessness of Gamelyn and
Robin Hood, both of whom set church and king at defiance, and even
account it a merit to revolt from the rule of both. It follows from
this that we shall find our chosen heroes of very different types and
characters; but we shall recognise that each represented to his own
age an ideal of heroism, which that age loved sufficiently to put into
literature, and perpetuate by the best means in its power. Of many
another hero besides Arthur--o