The Evolution of an Empire | Page 3

"decayed" beneath the weight of a splendid system, which had
not benefited, but had simply crushed out of him his original vigor.
Together with Roman villas, and vice, and luxury, had also come
Christianity. But the Briton, if he had learned to pray, had forgotten
how to fight,--and how to govern; and now the Roman Empire was
perishing. She needed all her legions to keep Alaric and his Goths out
of Rome.
[Sidenote: Roman Legions Withdrawn, 410 A.D.]
In 410 A.D. the fair cities and roads were deserted. The tramp of
Roman soldiers was heard no more in the land, and the enfeebled native
race were left helpless and alone to fight their battles with the Picts and
Scots;--that fierce Briton offshoot which had for centuries dwelt in the
fastnesses of the Highlands, and which swarmed down upon them like
vultures as soon as their protectors were gone.
In 446 A.D. the unhappy Britons invited their fate. Like their cousins,

the Gauls, they invited the Teutons from across the sea to come to their
rescue, and with result far more disastrous.
When the Frank became the champion and conqueror of Gaul, he had
for centuries been in conflict or in contact with Rome, and had learned
much of the old Southern civilizations, and to some extent adopted
their ideals. Not so the Angles and Saxons, who came pouring into
Britain from Schleswig-Holstein. They were uncontaminated pagans.
In scorn of Roman luxury, they set the torch to the villas, and temples
and baths. They came, exterminating, not assimilating. The more
complaisant Frank had taken Romanized, Latinized Gaul just as he
found her, and had even speedily adopted her religion. It was for Gaul a
change of rulers, but not of civilization.
But the Angles and Saxons were Teutons of a different sort. They
brought across the sea in those "keels" their religion, their manners,
habits, nature, and speech; and they brought them for use (just as the
Englishman to-day carries with him a little England wherever he goes).
Their religion, habits, and manners they stamped upon the helpless
Britons. In spite of King Arthur, and his knights, and his sword
"Excalibar," they swiftly paganized the land which had been for three
centuries Christianized; and their nature and speech were so ground
into the land of their adoption that they 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 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 poetry, 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 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
race in America for 200 years as well.
Our ancestors brought with them from their native land a simple, just,
Teutonic structure of