nce had
no infantry that dared to face the English bows and bills. A French King
was brought prisoner to London. An English King was crowned at Paris.
The banner of St. George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the
Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle, which for
a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the English Companies
obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands of warriors who let out
their weapons for hire to the princes and commonwealths of Italy.

Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that stirring
period. While France was wasted by war, till she at length found in
her own desolation a miserable defence against invaders, the English
gathered in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, and
studied in security. Many of our noblest architectural monuments belong
to that age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint
George, the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of
Salisbury and the majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible
language, formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the
common property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long
before genius began to apply that admirable machine to worthy purposes.
While English warriors, leaving behind them the devastated provinces of
France, entered Valladolid in triumph, and spread terror to the gates of
Florence, English poets depicted in vivid tints all the wide variety
of human manners and fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or
dared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe.
The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos and
Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.

In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people, properly
so called, first take place among the nations of the world. Yet while
we contemplate with pleasure the high and commanding qualities which
our forefathers displayed, we cannot but admit that the end which they
pursued was an end condemned both by humanity and by enlightened policy,
and that the reverses which compelled them, after a long and bloody
struggle, to relinquish the hope of establishing a great continental
empire, were really blessings in the guise of disasters. The spirit of
the French was at last aroused: they began to oppose a vigorous national
resistance to the foreign conquerors; and from that time the skill
of th