ts, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought
in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps,
and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of our
country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared.
Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that
we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our
glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the
national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has
ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders,
islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics,
their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness
that constitution which has ever since, through all changes,
preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free
constitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some
defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great
society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the
House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies
which now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its first
sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of
a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperial
jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned
the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England
terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which
still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded.
Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages
of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest
purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the
tongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of that
noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many
glories of England.

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was
all but complete; and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to be
mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world had been
formed by the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family
with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed,
scarcely anything in common between the England to which John had been
chased by Philip Augustus, an