King Alfred of England | Page 6

to be
ten thousand. There was a broad, deep, and continuous ditch on the
northern side of the wall, to make the impediment still greater for the
enemy, and a spacious and well-constructed military road on the
southern side, on which troops, stores, wagons, and baggage of every

kind could be readily transported along the line, from one end to the
other.
[Illustration: WALL OF SEVERUS]
The wall was a good defense as long as Roman soldiers remained to
guard it. But in process of time--about two centuries after Severus's
day--the Roman empire itself began to decline, even in the very seat
and center of its power; and then, to preserve their own capital from
destruction, the government were obliged to call their distant armies
home. The wall was left to the Britons; but they could not defend it.
The Picts and Scots, finding out the change, renewed their assaults.
They battered down the castles; they made breaches here and there in
the wall; they built vessels, and, passing round by sea across the mouth
of the Solway Frith and of the River Tyne, they renewed their old
incursions for plunder and destruction. The Britons, in extreme distress,
sent again and again to recall the Romans to their aid, and they did, in
fact, receive from them some occasional and temporary succor. At
length, however, all hope of help from this quarter failed, and the
Britons, finding their condition desperate, were compelled to resort to a
desperate remedy, the nature of which will be explained in the next
chapter.
[Footnote 1: For some account of the circumstances connected with this
war see our history of Alexander, chapter vi.]
CHAPTER II.
THE ANGLO-SAXONS
Any one who will look around upon the families of his acquaintance
will observe that family characteristics and resemblances prevail not
only in respect to stature, form, expression of countenance, and other
outward and bodily tokens, but also in regard to the constitutional
temperaments and capacities of the soul. Sometimes we find a group in
which high intellectual powers and great energy of action prevail for
many successive generations, and in all the branches into which the
original stock divides; in other cases, the hereditary tendency is to

gentleness and harmlessness of character, with a full development of all
the feelings and sensibilities of the soul. Others, again, exhibit
congenital tendencies to great physical strength and hardihood, and to
powers of muscular exertion and endurance. These differences,
notwithstanding all the exceptions and irregularities connected with
them, are obviously, where they exist, deeply seated and permanent.
They depend very slightly upon any mere external causes. They have,
on the contrary, their foundation in some hidden principles connected
with the origin of life, and with the mode of its transmission from
parent to offspring, which the researches of philosophers have never yet
been able to explore.
These same constitutional and congenital peculiarities which we see
developing themselves all around us in families, mark, on a greater
scale, the characteristics of the different nations of the earth, and in a
degree much higher still, the several great and distinct races into which
the whole human family seems to be divided. Physiologists consider
that there are five of these great races, whose characteristics, mental as
well as bodily, are distinctly, strongly, and permanently marked. These
characteristics descend by hereditary succession from father to son, and
though education and outward influences may modify them, they can
not essentially change them. Compare, for example, the Indian and the
African races, each of which has occupied for a thousand years a
continent of its own, where they have been exposed to the same variety
of climates, and as far as possible to the same general outward
influences. How entirely diverse from each other they are, not only in
form, color, and other physical marks, but in all the tendencies and
characteristics of the soul! One can no more be changed into the other,
than a wolf, by being tamed and domesticated, can be made a dog, or a
dog, by being driven into the forests, be transformed into a tiger. The
difference is still greater between either of these races and the
Caucasian race. This race might probably be called the European race,
were it not that some Asiatic and some African nations have sprung
from it, as the Persians, the Ph[oe]nicians, the Egyptians, the
Carthaginians, and, in modern times, the Turks. All the nations of this
race, whether European or African, have been distinguished by the
same physical marks in the conformation of the head and the color of

the skin, and still more by those traits of character--the intellect, the
energy, the spirit of determination and pride--which, far from owing
their existence to outward circumstances, have always, in all ages,
made all outward circumstances bend to