Or his peace to seek.
Woe is me,
That any man so proud should be,
Thus himself up to raise,
And over all men to boast.
May God Almighty show his soul mild-heart-ness,
And do him for his sins forgiveness!

From that time English poetry bifurcates. On the one hand, we have the
survival of the old Teutonic alliterative swing in Layamon's Brut and in
Piers Plowman--the native verse of the people sung by native minstrels:
and on the other hand we have the new Romance rimed metre in Robert of
Gloucester, "William of Palerne," Gower, and Chaucer. But from Piers
Plowman and Chaucer onward the Romance system conquers and the Teutonic
system dies rapidly. Our modern poetry is wholly Romance in descent,
form, and spirit.

Thus in literature as in civilisation generally, the culture of old
Rome, either as handed down ecclesiastically through the Latin, or as
handed down popularly through the Norman-French, overcame the native
Anglo-Saxon culture, such as it was, and drove it utterly out of the
England which we now know. Though a new literature, in Latin and
English, sprang up after the Conquest, that literature had its roots,
not in Sleswick or in Wessex, but in Greece, in Rome, in Provence, and
in Normandy. With the Normans, a new era began--an era when Romance
civilisation was grafted by harsh but strong hands on to the Anglo-Saxon
stock, the Anglo-Saxon institutions, and the Anglo-Saxon tongue. With
the first step in this revolution, our present volume has completed its
assigned task. The story of the Normans will be told by another pen in
the same series.

CHAPTER XXI.

ANGLO-SAXON INFLUENCES IN MODERN BRITAIN.

Perhaps the best way of summing up the results of the present inquiry
will be by considering briefly the main elements of our existing life
and our actual empire which we owe to the Anglo-Saxon nationality. We
may most easily glance at them under the five separate heads of blood,
character, language, civilisation, and institutions.

In _blood_, it is probable that the importance of the Anglo-Saxon
element has been generally over-estimated. It has been too usual to
speak of England as though it were synonymous with Britain, and to
overlook the numerical strength of the Celtic population in Scotland,
Wales, Cornwall, and Ireland. It has been too usual, also, to neglect
the considerable Danish, Norwegian, and Norman element, which, though
belonging to the same Low German and