ey exist to-day wherever the
Anglo-Saxon abides.

From Windsor Palace to the humblest abode in England (and in America)
are to be found the descendants of these dominating barbarians who
flooded the British Isles in the 5th Century. What sort of a race were
they? Would we understand England to-day, we must understand them. It
is not sufficient to know that they were bearded {17} and stalwart,
fair and ruddy, flaxen-haired and with cold blue eyes. We should know
what sort of souls looked out of those clear cold eyes. What sort of
impulses and hearts dwelt within those brawny breasts.

Their hearts were barbarous, but loving and loyal, and nature had
placed them in strong, vehement, ravenous bodies. They were untamed
brutes, with noble instincts.

They had ideals too; and these are revealed in the rude songs and epics
in which they delighted. Monstrous barbarities are committed, but
always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in
order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no
gleam of tenderness, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet
chaotic glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He
gives little promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a
reaching after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious
instinct. All these qualities had the future English nation slumbering
within them. Marriage was sacred, woman honored. All the members of a
family were responsible for the {18} acts of one member. The sense of
obligation and of responsibility was strong and binding.

Is not every type of English manhood explained by such an inheritance?
From the drunken brawler in his hovel to the English gentleman "taking
his pleasures sadly," all are accounted for; and Hampden, Milton,
Cromwell, John Bright, and Gladstone existed potentially in those
fighting, drinking savages in the 5th Century.

Their religion, after 150 years, was exchanged for Christianity. Time
softened their manners and habits, and mingled new elements with their
speech. But the Anglo-Saxon _nature_ has defied the centuries and
change. _A strong sense of justice_, and a _resolute resistance to
encroachments upon personal liberty_, are the warp and woof of
Anglo-Saxon character yesterday, to-day and forever. The steady
insistence of these traits has been making English History for
precisely 1,400 years, (from 495 to 1895,) and the history of the
Anglo-Saxon ra