nd; since it is an undeniable fact that of the
numerous dialects of the country called Lower Saxony, all (with the
exception of the Frisian) are forms of the Platt-Deutsch, and none of
them descendants of the Anglo-Saxon. Hence, as far as the language
represents the descent, whatever we Anglo-Saxons may be in Great
Britain, America, Hindostan, Australia, New Zealand, or Africa, we are
the least of our kith and kin in Germany. And we can afford to be so.
Otherwise, if we were a petty people, and given to ethnological
sentimentality, we might talk about the Franks of Charlemagne, as the
Celts talk of us; for, without doubt, the same Franks either
exterminated or denationalized us in the land of our birth, and
displaced the language of Alfred and AElfric in the country upon which it
first reflected a literature.

There are no absolute descendants of the ancestors of the English in
their ancestral country of Germany; the Germans that eliminated them
being but step-brothers at best. But there is something of the sort. The
conquest that destroyed the Angles, broke up the Frisians. Each shared
each other's ruin. This gives the common bond of misfortune. But there
is more than this. It is quite safe to say that the Saxons and
Frisians[4] were closely--_very_ closely--connected in respect to all
the great elements of ethnological affinity--language, traditions,
geographical position, history. Nor is this confined to mere
generalities. The opinion, first, I believe, indicated by Archbishop
Usher, and recommended to further consideration by Mr. Kemble, that the
Frisians took an important part in the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Great
Britain is gaining ground. True, indeed, it is that the current texts
from Beda and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle make no mention of them. They
speak only of Saxons, Angles, and Jutes. And true it is, that no
provincial dialect has been discovered in England which stands in the
same contrast to the languages of the parts about it, as the Frisian
does to the Dutch and Low German. Yet it is also true that, according to
some traditions, Hengist was a Frisian hero. And it is equally true
that, in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, we find more than one incidental
mention of Frisians in England--their presence being noticed as a matter
of course, and without any reference to their introduction. This is
shown in the following extract:--"That same year, the armies from among
the East-Anglians, and from among the North-Humbri