an German, Latin, and
Greek combined. The solution of the Irish question may lie in the fact
that the Irish are fighting against the inevitable; that they belong to
a race which is on its way to extinction, and which is intended to
survive only as a brilliant thread, wrought into the texture of more
commonplace but more enduring peoples.

It was written in the book of fate that a great nation should arise
upon that green island by the North Sea. A foundation of Roman cement,
made by a mingling of Keltic-Briton, and a corrupt, decayed
civilization, would have altered not alone the fate of a nation, but
the History of the World. Our barbarian ancestors brought from
Schleswig-Holstein a rough, clean, strong foundation for what was to
become a new type of humanity on the face of the earth. {22} A
Humanity which was not to be Persian nor Greek, nor yet Roman, but to
be nourished on the best results of all, and to become the
standard-bearer for the Civilization of the future.

The Jutes came first as an advance-guard of the great Teuton invasion.
It was but the prologue to the play when Hengist and Horsa, in 449
A.D., occupied what is now Kent, in the Southeast extremity of England.
It was only when Cerdic and his Saxons placed foot on British soil (495
A.D.) that the real drama began. And when the Angles shortly afterward
followed and occupied all that the Saxons had not appropriated (the
north and east coast), the actors were all present and the play began.
The Angles were destined to bestow their name upon the land
(Angle-land), and the Saxons a line of kings extending from Cerdic to
Victoria.

Covetous of each other's possessions, these Teutons fought as brothers
will. Exterminating the Britons was diversified with efforts to
exterminate one another. Seven kingdoms, four Anglian and three Saxon,
{23} for 300 years tried to annihilate each other; then, finally
submitting to the strongest, united completely,--as only children of
one household of nations can do. The Saxons had been for two centuries
dominating more and more until the long struggle ended--behold,
Anglo-Saxon England consolidated under one Saxon king! The other
kingdoms--Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, and
Essex--surviving as shires and counties.

In 802 A.D., while Charlemagne was welding together his vast and
composite empire, the Saxon Egbert (Ecgberht), descendant of Cerdic
(the "Alder-mann"), was consolidating a less imposing