Though often characterized as slow of thought and dull of fancy, the Saxon's leading mental feature, says James Russell Lowell, is common sense, understanding. His genius is his solidity. . . . He is healthy, in no danger of liver-complaint, with digestive apparatus of amazing force and precision. He is the best farmer and best grazier among men, raises the biggest crops and the fattest cattle, and consumes proportionate quantities of both. He settles and sticks like a diluvial deposit on the warm, low-lying levels, physical and moral. He has a prodigious talent, to use our Yankee phrase, of staying put. You cannot move him; he and rich earth have a natural sympathy of cohesion. Not quarrelsome, but with indefatigable durability of fight in him, sound of stomach, and not too refined in nervous texture, he is capable of indefinitely prolonged punishment, with a singularly obtuse sense of propriety in acknowledging himself beaten. Among all races perhaps none has shown so acute a sense of the side on which his bread is buttered, and so great a repugnance for having fine phrases take the place of the butyraceous principle. They invented the words 'hum-bug,' 'cant,' ' sham,' 'gag,' 'softsodder,'' flap-doodle,' and other disenchanting formulas whereby the devil of falsehood and unreality gets his apage Santana!"

This Saxon genius for the practical rather than the ideal led Washington Irving to satirize the American devotion to the Almighty Dollar and Napoleon to sneer at the English as a nation of shopkeepers; but it has also proved the salvation on more than one occasion of English and American liberty both at home and abroad, because it has created wealth and because it has made the citizens of both nations unwilling to allow anybody but their own representatives to spend that wealth. It was apparent in some of the provisions inserted in 1216 at Runnymede in the Great Charter. It appeared again in the Declaration of Independence at Philadelphia in 1776. It enabled William III to defy Louis XIV. It broke the power of France in America and in India. It overthrew Napoleon. Nor is its operation yet at an end. Within the memory of many men and women who are still young the world has seen these irresistible Saxon traits add the Philippines and Porto Rico to the domains of the

United States and annex to the British crown vast territories in Africa. The Saxon's idea of government was all his own. The theory on which every other modern commonwealth up to the nineteenth century rested was that all authority flowed downward from the king. The Saxon believed, on the other hand, that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. When he came to England he had no king. Though, in the course of time, he was forced to submit to many masters, he did not give up this conception. In 1688 he saw its complete triumph in England. In 1776 it freed America. In 1793 it freed France. In 1848 it triumphed in Germany. In 1906 it broke down the barriers of despotism in Russia. It has regenerated Japan, Turkey, and Persia. And it bids fair to go on making headway until the little seed of liberty that, previous to 449 A.D., grew only among the mists of Denmark shall have revolutionized all the governments of the earth.

The language which the Saxons brought to England, though in all essentials the language which we speak to-day, to a superficial observer is likely to seem more closely allied to German than to English. It was, indeed, a dialect of German. To master it is for us as difficult as it is to learn German. Like German, and unlike English, it is inflectional; that is, it has all of the cumbersome declensions, gender distinctions, and conjugations which characterize German, but from which English is free. A reasonably clear idea of what it was like may be obtained from an inspection of the following version of the Lord's Prayer, which was probably written about 700 A.D.:

Thu ure Fader, the eart on heofenum,

Si thin noman gehalgod.

Cume thin rice.

Si thin Willa on earthan twa on heofenum;

Syle us todag orne daegwanlican hlaf,

And forgif us ure gylter

Swa we forgifath tham the with us agylthat;

And ne laed thu na us on kostnunge;

Ac alys us fronn yfele. Si bit swa.

In 1915, in the "Phonographic Word Book," there appeared the statement that the 25 words that follow constitute one-quarter of all the English that is spoken or written:

If to these be added the 41 words listed below, these two lists, 66 words in all, will constitute one-third of all the words we use:

1. They 2. Our

4. God

21. Lord

38. Into

13. Will

30. Were

5. More

22. Us

39. Out

14. Thou

31. Been

6. Their

23. When

40. Unto

7. Them 8. There

15. Upon

32. Ꮎ

24. An

41. Thee

16. Word

33. Part

25. Go

17. Ye

34. Truth

9. My

26. Heaven

18. Had

35. Any

27. See

36. Ever

If to these two lists we add the 33 words that appear below, the three lists will contain one-half of all the words that we use:

It should be added that the words are arranged in the order of their frequency; that is, "the" occurs most often and "life" least.

While these statements may not be entirely accurate, they are no doubt substantially correct. For our present purpose, their significance lies in the fact that, of these 99 words, all, with the single exception of "part," are of Saxon origin. In addition, the grammar of English is almost exclusively Saxon.

The fact that the English have clung so tenaciously to their orig

inal language is a result of the solidity of which Lowell speaks. They will not, perhaps cannot, learn foreign languages except under the spur of sharp necessity. The foreigner who wishes to communicate with them must learn English.

When they landed at Ebbsfleet, they already possessed a literature, if that can be called a literature which was not written but transmitted by word of mouth. From the fragments of this literature ⚫ which still exist, Henry Morley has re-created for us a picture of the life of an early Saxon Scop, or Poet. He wanders from land to land. He sees cities and men. He feels the same pangs of jealousy that annoy more modern bards. To him, as to them, fame is the last infirmity of a noble mind. The best and happiest moments of his life are experienced when, harp in hand, he chants in the mead hall before an audience of warlike chiefs, who listen greedily to his songs and reward him with applause and ale.

We can imagine the hall in which these triumphs took place as being 200 feet by 40 in area, with a high roof and curved gables. At the front is a porch, at the rear a structure that forms cellar and pantry. The hall itself consists of a wide nave with narrow sideaisles. Pillars divide aisles from nave and support the central roof. Down the middle of the nave run stone hearths, upon which blaze great timber fires. At the upper end, at a cross-bench, is the raised seat of the king and his chief retainers. On each side of the long hearth there is a table, at which sit the warriors. Back of the rows of pillars are spaces for sleeping and storing the gilded vats of liquor into which are dipped the pails of the cup-bearers. In such a hall were enacted the chief scenes and in such a hall were chanted the stirring verses of "Beowulf," the greatest of the Saxon poems that have come down to our day.

Beowulf is an epic of 3178 lines. It may have originated in part before the landing at Ebbsfleet, though in its present form it contains references to events that happened as late as 520 A.D. and Christian passages which could hardly have been written prior to 600 A.D. For many centuries it was forgotten until, in 1705, a single copy was discovered in the British Museum. Finally, in 1815, a Danish scholar

named Thorkelin printed it and made it one of the most prized of English poems.

The story of Beowulf is as follows:

O say, have you heard of the Spear-Danes' dominion?
How Scyld Scefing reft from his foes their mead-benches?
That was a good king, that lord of the whale-road.

Hrothgar, the son of his grandson, was likewise
A great giver of rings. He made him a mead-hall,
Which he hight Heorot, which meaneth the hart's house.
Here there was joy; here the song of the glee-man,
Till a demon named Grendel, who came in the night-time,
After the beer-drinking, from the mists of the marshland,
Took thirty thanes and devoured them exulting.

For twelve years thereafter the great hall stood idle;

So long in the land raged the merciless monster;
So long did the heart of the king ache with anguish.

Then Beowulf, thane of the Geats, heard of Grendel,
And straight on the swan-road with fifteen companions
Embarked in a foamy-necked floater, a sea-wood,
That flew like a fowl for a day on the billows,

Till it came to the shores where languished good Hrothgar.
In Heorot then the helm of the Scyldings

Unlocked his word-hoard and welcomed the warriors
With mead and with melody, pleased at the proffer

That Beowulf brought to demolish the demon.

When the feasting was finished, the Spear-Danes departed,

And Beowulf bound in the shackles of slumber,

Grendel came groping, brake open the hall-mouth,
Seized hold of a sleeper, bit into his bone-case,
Drank the blood from his veins, and bolted the body.
Then, as Beowulf slept, he laid hold of the hero,
But he found his claw clutched by a hand-grip gigantic,
For Beowulf's strength was as thirty stout spear-men's.
The lofty hall rocked, though with iron-bands builded;
A fearful wound showed in the shoulder of Grendel;
Apart sprang the sinews; burst was his bone-frame;
Back to his bogs fled the fiend death-stricken,
While Beowulf laid down the hand, arm, and shoulder
Of Grendel the grim in the midst of the mead-hall.

Then Hrothgar rewarded with gold and with horses
The deed of the hero; the bard touched the glee-wood,
And the hall joy arose along the mead-benches.
Wealthow, the queen, brought beer to the hero,
And all for a day of Wyrd were regardless.

But with night came revengeful the mother of Grendel,

Slew in her sorrow Hrothgar's friend Aeschere,
And fled to the fens with the claw of her Grendel.

Then Beowulf spake in this wise to wise Hrothgar:
"Revenging a wrong is more goodly than grieving;
Let us follow." They went to a sea dark with dragons,
Pursuing the path of the perilous monster

[nobles]

[Fate]