Anglo-Saxon

“ The Anglo-Saxons, when they settled in Eastern and Southern Britain, were a horde of barbarous heathen pirates. They massacred or enslaved the civilised or half-civilised Celtic inhabitants with savage ruthlessness. They burnt or destroyed the monuments of Roman occupation. ”

“ It has been usual to represent the English conquest of South-eastern Britain as an absolute change of race throughout the greater part of our island. The Anglo-Saxons, it is commonly believed, came to England and the Lowlands of Scotland in overpowering numbers, and actually exterminated or drove into the rugged west the native Celts. The population of the whole country south of Forth and Clyde is supposed to be now, and to have been ever since the conquest, purely Teutonic or Scandinavian in blood, save only in Wales, Cornwall, and, perhaps, Cumberland and Galloway. ”

“ The Norman Conquest gave the death-blow to our old native literature, in the sense that the use of the literary Anglo-Saxon in its first integrity, as at once a learned language and a spoken language, did not extend beyond the generation that witnessed that great dynastic change. In this strict sense we might point to the close of the Worcester Chronicle in 1079 as the termination of Anglo-Saxon literature. ”

“ To the Anglo-Saxon blood we may doubtless attribute our general sobriety, steadiness, and persistence; our scientific patience and thoroughness; our political moderation and endurance; our marked love of individual freedom and impatience of arbitrary restraint. ”

“ There is one thing that the Anglo-Saxon does better than the “French, or Turk, or Rooshian,” to which add the German or the Belgian. When the Anglo-Saxon appoints an official, he appoints a servant: when the others put a man in uniform, they add to their long list of masters. If among your acquaintances you can discover an American, or Englishman, unfamiliar with the continental official, it is worth your while to accompany him, the first time he goes out to post a letter, say. He advances towards the post-office a breezy, self-confident gentleman, borne up by pride of race. ”

“ 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 Scandinavian stock, yet differs in some important particulars from the Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ An Anglo-Saxon poem has the appearance of a collection of short hints rather than poetical conceptions, curt and ejaculative: a paucity of objects yields but a paucity of emotions, too vague for detail, too abrupt for deep passion, too poor in fancy to scatter the imagery of poesy. The Anglo-Saxon betrays its confined and monotonous genius: we are in the first age of art, when pictures are but monochromes of a single colour. ”

“ The truth is, that among all those who have achieved great prominence in the English-speaking world, the Anglo-Saxon type is conspicuous by its absence. Nine times in ten, when a man boasts of “Anglo-Saxon” pluck, enterprise, ability, and progress, he himself is not of that type of man, and nine-tenths of the incidents he cites were brought about through the pluck, enterprise, ability and progress which came from mixed blood. ”

“ In the great basin between the Cordilleras of the West and the Alleghanies, where the Mississippi drains half the continent to the Mediterranean of the New World, there also the Anglo-Saxon has occupied the ground—twelve hundred thousand square miles; in the south to rear cotton, rice, and sugar; in the north to raise cattle and cereal grasses, for beast and for man.
What a spectacle it is! A nation not eighty years old and still in its cradle, and yet grown so great. Two hundred and fifty years ago, there was not an Anglo-Saxon on all this continent. ”

“ The relics of the Anglo-Saxon period that have been discovered in these districts present also some distinctive features. It is certain from the customs that prevailed, some of which have survived, from the remains found, from the old place-names, and from the variations in the shape of the skulls discovered, that the people of the Saxon kingdoms of England could not have been people of one race. ”

“ When the Saxons once turned their attention to letters, none of the barbarous nations excelled them—the progress made during the reign of Alfred, we again repeat, is marvellous.
Nothing can be more primitive than our Anglo-Saxon poetry. Every line bears the stamp of originality. The praise of brave warriors is ever the subject. ”

“ Anglo-Saxon lads, peacefully sleeping in the harbor of a Latin nation, had been treacherously blown up, and at the sight of that which was thicker than water in the hold of the Maine, the Anglo-Saxons of the world got still closer together. ”

“ Whatever there is in the English character of persistence, obstinacy, patience, industry, sobriety, love of freedom, we are accustomed to attribute to our Anglo-Saxon descent. In religion, arts, learning, literature, culture, we owe little or nothing to the Anglo-Saxon. ”

“ It is not likely that any absolutely pure-blooded Anglo-Saxons now exist in our midst at all, except perhaps among the farmer class in the most Teutonic and agricultural shires: and even this exception is extremely doubtful. Persons bearing the most obviously Celtic names—Welsh, Cornish, Irish, or Highland Scots—are to be found in all our large towns, and scattered up and down through the country districts. Hence we may conclude with great probability that the Anglo-Saxon blood has long since been everywhere diluted by a strong Celtic intermixture. ”

“ It is, Sir, a great race from which we came, or rather two great races, for I must protest that the way men speak of us as Anglo-Saxons is very imperfect and inadequate. We are not Anglo-Saxon simply, but Anglo-Celtic in origin. ”

“ It was probably the most remarkable evidence on record of the resourcefulness of the Anglo-Saxon race, and its ability and determination to dominate. Driven to desperation by conditions that threatened to destroy their civilization, the citizens of the South, through this organization, turned upon their enemies, overwhelmed them, and became again masters of their own soil ... and its proper use must be commended by all good men everywhere, for by it was preserved the purest Anglo-Saxon civilization of this nation. ”

“ The unifying force to-day is the Anglo-Saxon, who to the genius of the Roman for conquest and government, and to the genius of the Greek for letters and art, has added the genius of the Phœnician for commerce and the genius of the Hebrew for religion. Here we touch the secret of his ascendancy. The Anglo-Saxon civilization is Christian. His [Pg 14] language is becoming the universal language. His institutions are becoming the universal institutions. His ships carry the passengers and produce of the world. His capital dominates commerce. London is the clearing-house of the world. ”

“ Wherever the Anglo-Saxons came, their first work was to stamp out with fire and sword every trace of the Roman civilisation. Modern investigations amongst pagan Anglo-Saxon barrows in Britain show the Low German race as pure barbarians, great at destruction, but incapable of constructive work. Professor Rolleston, who has opened several of these early heathen tombs of our Teutonic ancestors, finds in them everywhere abundant evidence of "their great aptness at destroying, and their great slowness in elaborating, material civilisation." ”

“ The custom of junior right is no more likely to have been invented here and there in certain early boroughs and manors of Saxon England than of Mediæval England. We must look for its origin in the Continental homes of our oldest English forefathers. Some of the evidence which shows that the Anglo-Saxons had forefathers of many different tribes has already been brought forward, and the survival on our manors of so many different examples of ancient customary inheritance points to the same conclusion. ”

“ Though the so-called history of the conquest, handed down to us by Bæda and the "English Chronicle," [1] is now considered by many enquirers to be mythical in almost every particular, the facts themselves speak out for us with unhesitating certainty. We know that about the middle of the fifth century, shortly after the withdrawal of the regular Roman troops, several bodies of heathen Anglo-Saxons, belonging to the three tribes of Jutes, English, and Saxons, settled en masse on the south-eastern shores of Britain, from the Firth of Forth to the Isle of Wight. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon alone offers to the semi-civilised peoples that come under his control the advantages of intellectual and material development. The schoolhouse, the free press, agricultural and commercial development, are inseparable incidents of Anglo-Saxon sway. Political and material betterment are {217} the prizes it offers to the laggards in civilisation who come beneath its rule. This is what England offers in India, Egypt, and the Soudan; what the United States offers in the West Indies and the Philippines. ”

“ We of pure Anglo-Saxon stock, whose ancestors came to America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, have never been accused of hating ourselves and being oblivious to our origin. We have overloaded the Mayflower and over-populated Virginia and given William Penn a host of intimate friends. From the time of Washington Irving we have become more and more reconciled with our British cousins, and have learned to build our traditions from long before the Revolutionary War. We have become aware of our precious Anglo-Saxon heritage. ”

“ So well known and universally acknowledged is this characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon family, that one wonders how so much stress should have been laid on community of origin and identity of civilisation by the advocates of a better understanding between its two branches, and so little attention given to the one thing needful to efficient co-operation between political organisms—to wit, a common aim and purpose. ”

“ WITH the origin of any nation its early institutions must necessarily have been closely connected. Some of the most interesting traces of Anglo-Saxon life may he followed as far back as the time of the settlement. The changes which time has brought about in the early institutions that came into England with our tribal forefathers make it difficult to form an accurate estimate of them from the knowledge we have of the organization that prevailed during the later part of the Old English period. ”

“ Anyone who departs from the beaten track, and attempts to obtain some new information from archæological and other research bearing on the circumstances of the Anglo-Saxon settlement, will find many difficulties in his way, and that much time is required to make even small progress. Here and there, however, by the comparison of customs, old laws, the ancient names of places, and other archæological circumstances, with those of a similar kind in Scandinavia or Germany, some advance may be made. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon is less pliable than the Romans, a less indulgent master to conquered men; with more plastic power to organize and mould, he has a less comprehensive imagination, limits himself to a smaller number of forms, and so hews off and casts away what suits him not. ”

“ The Anglo-Saxon put on the new civilization and institutions brought him by the Conquest, as he would an embroidered garment; but the man within the garment, though modified by civilization, has never essentially changed. ”

“ More important still, during the war, there were times when we realized that Anglo-Saxondom was threatened with an eclipse of glory and influence. A thing is never so precious as when you are faced with losing it. ”

“ Men of many different races must have been among the ancestors of both the earlier and later Anglo-Saxon people.
In the eighth and ninth centuries three kingdoms in England bore the Saxon name, as mentioned by Bede and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle—viz., Essex, Sussex, and Wessex—and one province, Middlesex. As will be seen when considering the evidence relating to the settlers in various parts of England, it does not follow that these several parts of our country which were called after the Saxon name were colonized by people known as Saxons in Germany. ”

“ If we could look from the outside at our own institutions, we should see that the very notion of turning a thousand men into one large man walking to Westminster is not only an act of faith, but a fairy tale. The fruitful and effective history of Anglo-Saxon England would be almost entirely a history of its monasteries. Mile by mile, and almost man by man, they taught and enriched the land. ”

“ Yet it is none the less true that our whole civilisation is even now the carrying out and completion of the Greek and Roman culture in new fields and with fresh intellects. We owe little here to the Anglo-Saxon; we owe everything to the great stream of western culture, which began in Egypt and Assyria, permeated Greece and the Archipelago, spread to Italy and the Roman empire, and, finally, now embraces the whole European and American world. The Teutonic intellect and the Teutonic character have largely modified the spirit of the Mediterranean civilisation ”

“ SAXON CONQUEST OF ENGLAND.—In the fourth century, when the power of Rome was declining, the Picts and Scots from the North began to make incursions into the Roman province of Britain. At the same time Teutonic tribes from the mouths of the Weser and the Elbe, began to land as marauders upon the coast. Honorius withdrew the Roman troops from the island in 411; and it was conquered by these invading tribes, especially the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. They became one people, called Anglo-Saxons, Angles or English. ”