name of France. It was the Scandinavian division of these peoples who, spreading from Denmark to Norway and Sweden, became the sea-kings of the North, - sending their ships to colonize Iceland, and sailing over the Northern Atlantic to Greenland more than four hundred years before Columbus discovered America. And it was still another horde of these Teutons who, settling all along the moist, uninviting shores of the North Sea, finally became the conquerors and holders of the British Isles. Angles, or "English," was the name common to the tribes inhabiting the various settlements along the coasts of the North Sea and in its islands; so that of all the names which could have been given to this great nation, none is so appropriate as the English.

Adventurous and bold as they were by nature, and living on the borders of the North Sea, or in the islands surrounded by its waters, they naturally became daring sailors, holding stern rule over the waves they claimed as their rightful domain. Their power was soon felt among neighboring nations, and they were heard of in the island of Britain, separated from it only by the seas on which they ranged.

This island of Britain was then inhabited by a people who belonged to the Keltic branch of the great Aryan family. These were the Kymry, the Ancient Britons of history. Long before the coming of the English the country of the Britons had been invaded by Roman legions under the great Cæsar, and the Roman empire had kept up a sort of rule through the reigns of several emperors. The Romans had built military roads, camps, and walls on British soil; and as they were the best road-makers in the world, you may find many traces of their work in England to this day. The Romans, too, had brought Christianity to Britain, and the new religion was adopted there; so that the Britons felt their superiority over other peoples, and looked on their neighbor Teutons across the North Sea as barbarous and heathen men who knew not the true God and were outside the pale of religion and civilization. You will find it hard to believe that the Britons could have invited a people

whom they so looked down upon to come and live among them. Yet in the middle of the fifth century such an invitation was given, and a band of English, led by Hen449 gist and Horsa, took advantage of it. The Britons were led to make this invitation by a mixture of fear and prudence. They had at their backs in Scotland, and across the Irish Sea in Ireland, bands of savage enemies, the Picts and the Scots, who were constantly overrunning and devastating Britain. These enemies were dreaded by the British, who dreaded almost equally the savage rovers of the North Sea. But they thought, by making friends with the latter and inviting them to come to Britain, they might get their aid against Scot and Pict. Therefore Vortigern, a British king, introduced Hengist and Horsa into the land as his allies. And after coming thither, Hengist made a marriage between his daughter Rowena and the king, so that an English woman became a queen in Britain.

Having once set foot in the British domains, the English people, with that tenacity which is a part of their character, prepared to stay there. They called the Britons Welsh,which means foreigner, and began to treat them as if they were really interlopers and foreigners on their own lands. The Britons, no less obstinate than the English, refused to surrender, and were driven, inch by inch, westward and southward into the strongholds in the mountains of Wales and to the rocky peninsula of Cornwall. Here their language, their literature, and their religion were fostered as they had been before the hated English landed in Britain. Meanwhile the English grew and spread over the island now called England, on which they had fought for their place till they were firmly established as the rightful owners of the land. And thus, by the right of conquest, the English people became possessors of England.

II.

TELLING HOW LETTERS AND LEARNING FIRST CAME TO ENGLAND.

OU will readily guess that these warlike English, when

YOU

they landed on the shores of England, were not a literary people. The Britons, who were such savages in the eyes of the cultured Romans, were much more advanced in learning and religion than their English conquerors. Yet the Teutonic peoples did have a system of writing, in characters called Runes, which they claimed had been taught them by their god Odin, or Woden. These Runic letters were carved on stone or wood, which had been used by all ancient peoples before paper or parchment was discovered. Egypt wrote her hieroglyphics on stone, just as the North American Indian cut upon the bowlders of his native country the rude picture-writing which preserves the memory of his battles. Thus the Teutons had engraved their Runes, doubtless on the stones and trees of their various dwellingplaces. Our word book is from boc, the Early English for beech-tree, probably because the beech is a hard wood, which could easily be used by the early book-makers. Still, with only stone and wood in place of pen, ink, and paper, we cannot expect to find any works of literature among our English when they came to their new home in Britain.

The want of pen, ink, and paper, however, or even of written characters, does not prevent a people from having its poetry or history. We do not know a tribe so barbarous that they have not had among them a story-teller or minstrel, the earliest historian or poet of a people. These men repeat the traditions of the past or the deeds of the men around them; and these stories, rehearsed from mouth to mouth, or handed down from generation to generation, before the time of book-making, might in later times get written down, and so become the first history or the earliest

poem of a nation. The Britons had their bards, who sang to harps songs of war and praises of heroes. The Scandinavians had a sagaman and scald; the English their scop and gleeman. The chiefs honored these men as princes honor poets. They had them at their feasts, they took them to the field of battle; and the court of these old rulers would not have been complete without its minstrel. These singers or story-tellers would keep alive the traditions of their tribes, and it is probable that they preserved from father to son the old stories which had been told among the Teutonic branch of the Aryan family, before they broke up into different tribes; for among the Germans, Scandinavians, and English there is a great likeness in some of the earliest literary remains, which most likely comes from the fact that the root-stories or myths were the same, and dated back to the time when they were one people. What is more natural than to suppose that when these migrating hordes separated, each carried away the early traditions, to embellish them over again with deeds of more recent heroes and the scenery of their new dwelling-places?

How many such myths our English forefathers brought to Britain, we do not know. It was not until long after they had been settled in their new homes that any verses of their singers were written down; and only after it is committed to writing can we fairly begin the study of literature. First, they were obliged to seek less clumsy means for the writing of poetry than the side of a flat bowlder or the wood of a tree, and for characters more generally understood than the Runic letters. Let us see, then, how the use of parchment and our modern kind of letters first came into England.

It was hardly a hundred and fifty years after the English had conquered Britain that a Roman priest, passing along the streets of his city of Rome, saw some blue-eyed, handsome youths exposed for sale in the slave-market. Their beauty attracted him so much that he stopped, and asked who these strangers were. "They are Angles," was the answer. "Not so," said the priest; "not Angles, but angels, for they have angels' faces, and it becomes such

to be co-heirs with the angels in heaven." A few years later, when this same Roman priest had become Pope Gregory, and was all-powerful over the Roman empire, he remembered these Angles, or English, whose faces had so impressed him, and would not rest till he had sent Christian missionaries to England to snatch these people from heathenism. The English had received no teachings of Christianity from their conquered foes, the Britons. There were only bloody instructions on both sides, and the Britons, with pride in their superior religion, called their conquerors "heathen" and "barbarians," while the English took fierce delight in burning the religious houses and putting to death the holy men among the Britons. So the religion which taught peace and good will among men did not spread from one to the other people.

It was in the year 596 that the ship sent by Pope Gregory landed the good father Augustine, with forty monks, on the shores of Kent. Ethelbert, king of Kent, heard of the coming of this little band of strange men, clad in long robes, bearing aloft a silver cross with the image of Christ painted on a board. The English monarch, not knowing what to think of men who came without weapons, feared they were magicians, and sat under a spreading tree to receive them; because if they tried to use any evil arts of witchcraft, their spells would be less powerful in the free air. Instead of spears and battle-axes, these monks bore rolls of parchment written all over with letters unknown to the English king. These parchments were the Bible, a book of the four Gospels, a Psalter, and a history of the Christian Martyrs.

You will see that the most important book which the Roman priests brought to England was the Old Testament. This was a sacred book of the Hebrew people, who were not related to the Teutonic peoples, from whom our English sprang. The Hebrews belong to another family of mankind, the Semitic family; and from them we derive our religion and that wonderful book, the Old Testament, which is made up of the writings of their inspired men, their