receive a universal and profound impression of Roman civilization. The Britons disappeared or retired before the Saxons and Angles; after this period, the conquest of the Saxons by the Danes, and of the united Danes and Saxons by the Normans, only commingled upon the soil a number of peoples of common origin, of analogous habits, and almost equally barbarous character. The vanquished were oppressed, but they had not to humiliate their weakness before the brutal manners of their masters; and the victors were not compelled to submit by degrees to the rule of the more polished manners of their new subjects. Among a nation so homogeneous, and throughout the vicissitudes of its destiny, even Christianity did not perform the part which devolved upon it elsewhere. On adopting the faith of Saint Remi, the Franks found in Gaul a Roman clergy, wealthy and influential, who necessarily undertook to modify the institutions, ideas, and manner of life, as well as the religious belief of the conquerors. The Christian clergy of the Saxons were themselves Saxons, long as uncouth and barbarous as the members of their flocks, but never estranged from, or indifferent to, their feelings and recollections. Thus the young civilization of the North grew up, in England, in all the simplicity and energy of its nature, and in complete independence of the borrowed forms and foreign sap which it elsewhere received from the old civilization of the South. This important fact, which perhaps determined the course of political institutions in England, could not fail to exercise great influence over the character and development of her poetry also.
A nation that proceeds in such strict conformity to its first impulse, and never ceases to belong entirely to itself, naturally regards itself with looks of complacency. The feeling of property attaches, in its view, to all that affects
