the skies; the
west front of Lincoln, adorned with marvellous carvings, rears itself on
the hill above the town; Peterborough opens its wide bays, deep as the
portals of French churches; Durham, a heavy and massive pile built by
knight-bishops, overlooks the valley of the Wear, and seems a divine
fortress, a castle erected for God. The donjons of the conquerors,
Rochester, London, Norwich, Lincoln, are enormous, square and thick, so
high and so solid that the idea of taking these giant structures could
never occur to the native dreamers, who wait "till the end shall be good
when God pleases"!

The masters of the land are ever ready for everything, and find time for
everything: if their religious edifices are considered, it seems as
though they had cared for nothing else; if we read the accounts of their
wars, it appears as if they were ever on their way to military
expeditions, and never left the field of battle. Open the innumerable
manuscripts which contain the monuments of their literature: these works
can be meant, it seems, but for men of leisure, who have interminable
days to spend in lengthy pastimes; they make their Benoits de
Sainte-More give them an account of their origins in chronicles of
43,000 lines. This literature is ample, superabundant, with numberless
branches and endless ramifications; they have not even one literature
only; they have three: a French, a Latin, and later an English one.

Their matchless strength and their indomitable will further one
particular cause: the infusion of French and Latin ideas in the
Anglo-Saxon people, and the connection of England with the civilisations
of the South. The task was arduous: Augustine, Alfred, Dunstan, kings
and saints, had attempted it and failed; the Normans tried and
succeeded. They were ever successful.

Powerful means were at their disposal, and they knew how to make the
best of them. Firstly, the chiefs of the nation are French; their wives
are mostly French too: Stephen, Henry II., John, Henry III., Edward I.,
Edward II., Richard II., all marry Frenchwomen. The Bohuns (from whom
came the Herefords, Essexes, Northamptons), the Beauchamps (Warwick),
the Mowbrays (Nottingham, Norfolk), the Bigods (Norfolk), the Nevilles
(Westmoreland, Warwick), the Montgomerys (Shrewsbury, Pembroke,
Arundel), the Beaumonts and the Montforts (Leicester), are Frenchmen.
People of less importance married to English women--"matrimonia quoque
cum subditis jungunt"[144]--