are to be found the descendants of these dominating barbarians who
flooded the British Isles in the 5th Century. What sort of a race were
they? Would we understand England to-day, we must understand them. It
is not sufficient to know that they were bearded and stalwart, fair and
ruddy, flaxen-haired and with cold blue eyes. We should know what sort
of souls looked out of those clear cold eyes. What sort of impulses and
hearts dwelt within those brawny breasts.

Their hearts were barbarous, but loving and loyal, and nature had
placed them in strong, vehement, ravenous bodies. They were untamed
brutes, with noble instincts.

They had ideals too; and these are revealed in the rude songs and epics
in which they delighted. Monstrous barbarities are committed, but
always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in
order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no
gleam of poetry, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet chaotic
glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He gives little
promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a reaching
after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious
instinct. All these qualities had the future English nation slumbering
within them. Marriage was sacred, woman honored. All the members of a
family were responsible for the acts of one member. The sense of
obligation and of responsibility was strong and binding.

Is not every type of English manhood explained by such an inheritance?
From the drunken brawler in his hovel to the English gentleman "taking
his pleasures sadly," all are accounted for; and Hampden, Milton,
Cromwell, John Bright, and Gladstone existed potentially in those
fighting, drinking savages in the 5th Century.