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Francs, or free-men, who conquered what was formerly known as Gaul, and gave it its modern name of France. It was the Scandinavian division of these peoples who, spreading from Denmark to Norway and Sweden, became the seakings 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 conquerers 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 islands of Britain, separated from them only by the seas on which they ranged.

These islands of Britain were then inhabited by a people who belonged to the Keltic branch of the great Aryan family. These people were the Kymry, known also in history as ancient Britons. 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 reign of several Emperors. They had built military roads, camps and walls on British soil, and as the Romans 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

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North Sea as barbarous and heathen men, who knew not the true God and were outside the pale of religion and civilizaYou 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 5th century such an invitation was given, and a band of English led by Hengist and Horsa took advantage of it. The cause which led the Britons to make this invitation was 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 Scots, who were constantly overrunning and devastating Britain. These enemies were dreaded by the British, while they dreaded almost equally the savage rovers of the North Sea. 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 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 Welch -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 give up, and were driven, inch by inch, westward and southward into the strongholds in the mountains of Wales, and to the rocky peninsular of Cornwall. Here their language their literature and religion were fostered just as 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.

TALK II.

TELLING HOW LETTERS AND LEARNING FIRST CAME TO ENGLAND.

You will readily guess that these war-like English were not a literary people when they landed on the shores of England. 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 all 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 Wodin. These Runic letters were carved on stone or wood, which have been used by all ancient people before paper or parchment was discovered. Egypt wrote her hieroglyphics on stone, just as the North American Indian has cut upon the boulders 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 was 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 emigrating hordes separated, each carried away the early traditions, to embellish the mover 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 boulder or the wood of a tree, and for characters more easily 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 150 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. "Right," said the priest, "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 English, or Angles, 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 of the British. 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 who came with him, on the shores of Kent, in England. 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 out 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 battleaxes, 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 Psaltery and a history of the Christian Martyrs.

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