tors out of
Scania,--the inability to find food there. "The population," we are
assured, "was teeming, the sterile land could not feed them, but the
roaring surges surrounded them. All loved the sea, and upon, the waves,
and beyond the waves, they were ever seeking their fortunes. From
Hauteville, nigh Coutances, came the conquerors of Apulia and Sicily.
And when we call over Battle-Abbey Roll, or search the Domesday record,
or trace the lineage of our [the British] aristocracy, we shall find
that the lords of these same Cotentin castles, with scarcely an
exception, served in the Conqueror's army, or settled in the realm they
won." The plain English of which is, that they were the cleverest, the
most active, and the most successful robbers of their day and nation.

England was too near Normandy not to be an object of the first interest
to the Normans. At the close of the tenth century King Ethelred II.
adopted a course that was destined to have the most memorable
consequences. Richard le Bon bore himself toward the English much the
same as the English of to-day bore themselves toward us in the Secession
war. The Danes were then the worst enemies of England, and the Norman
government so far anticipated the Palmerstonian policy of neutrality,
which consists in favoring the enemies of those whom you hate, as to
throw open its ports to the ravagers of Normandy's neighbor. "Without
sharing the danger," observes Sir F. Palgrave, "Normandy prospered upon
the prey which the Danskerman made in England. The Normans were a
thriving and money-getting people. The great fair of Guipry attests
their national tendency. The liberal policy of the Dukes is also
forcibly illustrated by the remarkable treaty of peace concluded between
Richard le Bon and Olave, the Norskman, securing to the rovers the right
of free trade in Normandy. No certificate of origin was required when
the big bales of English stuffs were offered to the chapman at the
bridge-head of Rouen; and the perils of England were much enhanced by
the _entente cordiale_--this expression has become technical, and
therefore untranslatable--subsisting between Romane Normandy and the
Northmen of the North."

There is something amusing in this extract; for it describes, as it
were, and in advance, the state of things that existed during our late
war. The Secessionists were our Danes, who, if they did not ravage our
lands, cut up our commerce at a fearful rate, and not only found she