finished. He had, with supreme dexterity and wisdom, blended two
Civilizations, had at the right moment curbed the destructive element
in feudalism, and had secured to the Englishman free access to the
surface for all time. Thus the old English freedom was in fact restored
by the Norman Conquest, by _direct_ act of the Conqueror.

William typified in his person a transitional time, the old Norse
world, mingling strangely in him with the new. He was the last outcome
of his race. Norse daring and cruelty were side by side with gentleness
and aspiration. No human pity tempered his vengeance. When hides were
hung on the City Walls at Alencon, in insult to his mother (the
daughter of a tanner), he tore out the eyes, cut off the hands and feet
of the prisoners, and threw them over the walls. When he did this, and
when he refused Harold's body a grave, it was the spirit of the sea-
wolves within him. But it was the man of the coming Civilization, who
could not endure death by process of law in his Kingdom, and who
delighted to discourse with the gentle and pious Anselm, upon the
mysteries of life and death.

The _indirect_ benefits of the Conquest, came in enriching streams
from the older civilizations. As Rome had been heir to the
accumulations of experience in the ancient Nations, so England, through
France became the heir to Latin institutions, and was joined to the
great continuous stream of the World's highest development. Fresh
intellectual stimulus renovated the Church. Roman law was planted upon
the simple Teuton system of rights. Every department in State and in
Society shared the advance, while language became refined, flexible,
and enriched.

This engrafting with the results of antiquity, was an enormous saving