mas of the poets bring relief
and incite to nobler action.
"The soul hath need of prophet and redeemer.
Her outstretched wings against her prisoning bars
She waits for truth, and truth is with the dreamer
Persistent as the myriad light of stars."[5]
We need to listen to a poet like Browning, who--
"Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, tho' right were worsted, wrong would triumph.
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake."
In the fourth place, the twentieth century is emphasizing the fact
that neither happiness nor perpetuity of government is possible
without the development of a spirit of service,--a truth long since
taught by English literature. We may learn this lesson from _Beowulf_,
the first English epic, from Alfred the Great, from William Langland,
and from Chaucer's _Parish Priest_. All Shakespeare's greatest and
happiest characters, all the great failures of his dramas, are sermons
on this text. In _The Tempest_ he presents Ariel, tendering his
service to Prospero:--
"All hail, great master! grave sir, hail! I come
To answer thy best pleasure."
Shakespeare delights to show Ferdinand winning Miranda through
service, and Caliban remaining an abhorred creature because he
detested service. Much of modern literature is an illuminated text on
the glory of service. Coleridge voiced for all the coming years what
has grown to be almost an elemental feeling to the English-speaking
race:--
"He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small."
The Home and Migrations of the Anglo-Saxon Race.--Just as there was
a time when no English foot had touched the shores of America, so
there was a period when the ancestors of the English lived far away
from the British Isles. For nearly four hundred years prior to the
coming of the Anglo-Saxons, Britain had been a Roman province. In 410
A.D. the Romans withdrew their legions from Britain to protect Rome
herself against swarms of Teutonic invaders. About 449 a band of
Teutons, called Jutes, left Denmark, landed on the Isle of Thanet (in
the north-eastern part of Kent), and began the conquest of Britain.
Warriors from the tribes of the Angles and the Saxons soon followed,
and drove westward the original inhabitants, the Britons or Welsh,
_i.e._ foreigners, as the Teutons styled the natives.
Before the invasion of Britain, the Teutons inhabited the central part
of Europe as far s
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