there was no hope of maintaining them safely in their position
except by making the class as numerous and as strong as possible. In a
word, William saw very clearly that, while it would have been very well,
if it had been possible, for him to have brought _no_ Normans to
England, it was clearly best, since so many must go, to contrive every
means to swell and increase the number. It was one of those cases
where, being obliged to go far, it is best to go farther; and William
resolved on thoroughly _Normanizing_, so to speak, the whole British
realm. This enormous undertaking he accomplished fully and permanently;
and the institutions of England, the lines of family descent, the
routine of judicial and administrative business, and the very language
of the realm, retain the Norman characteristics which he ingrafted into
them to the present day.

It gives us a feeling akin to that of sublimity to find, even in our own
land, and in the most remote situations of it, the lingering relics of
the revolutions and deeds of these early ages, still remaining, like a
faint ripple rolling gently upon a beach in a deep and secluded bay,
which was set in motion, perhaps, at first, as one of the mountainous
surges of a wintery storm in the most distant seas. For example, if we
enter the most humble court in any remote and newly-settled country in
the American forests, a plain and rustic-looking man will call the
equally rustic-looking assembly to order by rapping his baton, the only
symbol of his office, on the floor, and calling out, in words mystic and
meaningless to him, "O yes! O yes! O yes!"[K] He little thinks that he
is obeying a behest of William the Conqueror, issued eight hundred years
ago, ordaining that his native tongue should be employed in the courts
of England. The irresistible progress of improvement and reform have
gradually displaced the intruding language again--except so far as it
has become merged and incorporated with the common language of the
country--from all the ordinary forms of legal proceedings. It lingers
still, however, as it were, on the threshold, in this call to order; and
as it is harmless there, the spirit of conservatism will, perhaps,
preserve for it this last place of refuge for a thousand years to come,
and "_O yes_" will be the phrase for ordaining silence by many
generations of officers, who will, perhaps, never have heard of the
authority whose orders they unwittingly obey.

[Footnote K: Oyez