ure to overtake them; if they
retreated, they were sure to make their escape. They were clothed in
a loose and flowing dress, and wore their hair long and hanging about
their shoulders; and they had the art, as their descendants have now,
of contriving and fabricating arms of such superior construction and
workmanship, as to give them, on this account alone, a great advantage
over all cotemporary nations. There were two other points in which
there was a remarkable similarity between this parent stock in its
rude, early form, and the extended social progeny which represents it
at the present day. One was the extreme strictness of their ideas of
conjugal fidelity, and the stern and rigid severity with which all
violations of female virtue were judged. The woman who violated her
marriage vows was compelled to hang herself. Her body was then burned
in public, and the accomplice of her crime was executed over the
ashes. The other point of resemblance between the ancient Anglo-Saxons
and their modern descendants was their indomitable pride. They could
never endure any thing like _submission_. Though sometimes
overpowered, they were never conquered. Though taken prisoners and
carried captive, the indomitable spirit which animated them could
never be really subdued. The Romans used sometimes to compel their
prisoners to fight as gladiators, to make spectacles for the amusement
of the people of the city. On one occasion, thirty Anglo-Saxons, who
had been taken captive and were reserved for this fate, strangled
themselves rather than submit to this indignity. The whole nation
manifested on all occasions a very unbending and unsubmissive will,
encountering every possible danger and braving every conceivable ill
rather than succumb or submit to any power except such as they had
themselves created for their own ends; and their descendants, whether
in England or America, evince much the same spirit still.

It was the landing of a few boat-loads of these determined and
ferocious barbarians on a small island near the mouth of the Thames,
which constitutes the great event of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons
in England, which is so celebrated in English history as the epoch
which marks the real and true beginning of British greatness and
power. It is true that the history of England goes back beyond this
period to narrate, as we have done, the events connected with the
contests of the Romans and the aboriginal Britons, and the incursions