encountering every possible danger and braving every conceivable ill
rather than succumb or submit to any power except such as they had
themselves created for their own ends; and their descendants, whether
in England or America, evince much the same spirit still.

It was the landing of a few boat-loads of these determined and
ferocious barbarians on a small island near the mouth of the Thames,
which constitutes the great event of the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons
in England, which is so celebrated in English history as the epoch
which marks the real and true beginning of British greatness and
power. It is true that the history of England goes back beyond this
period to narrate, as we have done, the events connected with the
contests of the Romans and the aboriginal Britons, and the incursions
and maraudings of the Picts and Scots; but all these aborigines passed
gradually--after the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons--off the stage.
The old stock was wholly displaced. The present monarchy has sprung
entirely from its Anglo-Saxon original; so that all which precedes the
arrival of this new race is introductory and preliminary, like the
history, in this country, of the native American tribes before the
coming of the English Pilgrims. As, therefore, the landing of the
Pilgrims on the Plymouth Rock marks the true commencement of the
history of the American Republic, so that of the Anglo-Saxon
adventurers on the island of Thanet represents and marks the origin
of the British monarchy. The event therefore, stands as a great
and conspicuous landmark, though now dim and distant in the remote
antiquity in which it occurred.

And yet the event, though so wide-reaching and grand in its bearings
and relations, and in the vast consequences which have flowed and
which still continue to flow from it, was apparently a minute and