incumbent upon them to derive English words from Welsh roots, and to
trace the origin of English social institutions to Celtic models. The
facts seem to indicate that while the modern English nation is largely
Welsh in blood, it is wholly Teutonic in form and language. Each of us
probably traces back his descent to mixed Celtic and Germanic ancestry:
but while the Celts have contributed the material alone, the Teutons
have contributed both the material and the form.




CHAPTER VIII.

HEATHEN ENGLAND.


We can now picture to ourselves the general aspect of the country after
the English colonies had established themselves as far west as the
Somersetshire marshes, the Severn, and the Dee. The whole land was
occupied by little groups of Teutonic settlers, each isolated by the
mark within their own township; each tilling the ground with their own
hands and those of their Welsh serfs. The townships were rudely gathered
together into petty chieftainships; and these chieftainships tended
gradually to aggregate into larger kingdoms, which finally merged in the
three great historical divisions of Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex;
divisions that survive to our own time as the North, the Midlands, and
the South. Meanwhile, most of the Roman towns were slowly depopulated
and fell into disrepair, so that a "waste chester" becomes a common
object in Anglo-Saxon history. Towns belong to a higher civilisation,
and had little place in agricultural England. The roads were neglected