, inherent in the Norman mind, to which everything was
valueless that shared not in some degree its own enduring character.
Abhorrent alike of despotism and license, they imparted this love of
institutions wherever they came. In their days the world was passing
through a fierce ordeal. A stern necessity lay on the whole system of
things, a necessity which may be expressed in this brief formula,--the
sword. In their several missions, if I may so speak, the Normans were
forced to use the appointed instrument of the hour; but the readiness
with which the sword was sheathed, the facility with which the soldier
changed into the citizen, shows how deeply they felt that a state of
hostilities, bloodshed, and disorder could not be the normal condition
of man. And so we see them pass at once from the battle-field to the
council-chamber. The fierce warrior of yesterday is the thoughtful
legislator of to-day. The first interval of repose was ever employed in
devising means for giving stability to their acquisitions, and a
constitutional form to the society in which they were to be vested.
Among the Teutons, such a task was never referred to the wisdom of any
one leader, however successful,--any oligarchy of chiefs, however
eminent. From time immemorial, the provisions from which their laws were
derived, and on which their societies were based, were the emanations of
free public opinion. Their armies were triumphant, because the soldier
yielded up his will implicitly to his general; their societies were
vigorous and stable, because, when the soldier became a citizen, he
resumed that will again. No sooner had conquest and peace transmuted the
army into a society, than the dominant sentiment appeared,--the
sentiment of rational independence,--resulting, as the community formed,
in liberal institutions."[H] Had this legislative spirit been applied to
Greece at the close of the eleventh century, the effect would have been
to create there a powerful nation; and the Crescent never would have
triumphed over the Cross in that land from which the West has drawn so
much that is of the highest value in all its processes of intellectual
culture.

There is a reverse to this picture of the Normans. They had some very
bad qualities, for they had no higher claims to perfection than is found
in the case of any other people. Mr. James Augustus St. John, speaking
of the Norman princess Emma, who married the English Ethelred, says,
after admitting her