d Harry--Henryson--The town mouse
and the country mouse--Dunbar--Gavin Douglas--Popular
ballads--Poetry in the flamboyant style 503

III. Material welfare; Prose.--Development of the
lower and middle class--Results of the wars--Trade, navy,
savings.
Books of courtesy--Familiar letters; Paston Letters--Guides
for the traveller and trader--Fortescue and his praise of
English institutions--Pecock and his defence of the
clergy--His style and humour--Compilers, chroniclers,
prosators of various sort--Malory, Caxton, Juliana Berners,
Capgrave, &c. 513

IV. The Dawn of the Renaissance.--The literary
movement in Italy--Greek studies--Relations with Eastern
men of letters--Turkish wars and Greek exiles--Taking of
Constantinople by Mahomet II.--Consequences felt in Italy,
France, and England 523

Index 527

BOOK I.

_THE ORIGINS._

CHAPTER I.

_BRITANNIA._

I.

The people that now occupies England was formed, like the French people,
by the fusion of several superimposed races. In both countries the same
races met and mingled at about the same period, but in different
proportions and under dissimilar social conditions. Hence the striking
resemblances and sharply defined contrasts that exist in the genius of
the two nations. Hence also the contradictory sentiments which mutually
animated them from century to century, those combinations and
recurrences of esteem that rose to admiration, and jealousy that swelled
to hate. Hence, again, the unparalleled degree of interest they offer,
one for the other. The two people are so dissimilar that in borrowing
from each other they run no risk of losing their national
characteristics and becoming another's image; and yet, so much alike are
they, it is impossible that what they borrowed should remain barren and
unproductive. These loans act like leaven: the products of English
thought during the Augustan age of British literature were mixed with
French leaven, and the products of French thought during the Victor Hugo
period were penetrated with English yeast.

Ancient writers have left us little information concerning the remotest
period and the oldest inhabitants of the British archipelago; works
which would be invaluable to us exist only in m