k, beside the swampy margin of the
North Sea, has grown into the nucleus of a vast empire, only very
partially Germanic in blood, and enriched by all the alien culture of
Egypt, Assyria, Greece, and Rome. But as it still preserves the
identical tongue of its early barbarous days, we are naturally tempted
to read our modern acquired feelings into the simple but familiar terms
employed by our continental predecessors. What the early English called
a king we should now-a-days call a chief; what they called a meeting of
wise men we should now-a-days call a palaver. In fact, we must recollect
that we are dealing with a purely barbaric race--not savage, indeed, nor
without a certain rude culture of its own, the result of long centuries
of previous development; yet essentially military and predatory in its
habits, and akin in its material civilisation to many races which we now
regard as immeasurably our inferiors. If we wish for a modern equivalent
of the primitive Anglo-Saxon level of culture, we may perhaps best find
it in the Kurds of the Turkish and Persian frontier, or in the Mahrattas
of the wild mountain region of the western Deccan.

The early English in Sleswick and Friesland had partially reached the
agricultural stage of civilisation. They tilled little plots of ground
in the forest; but they depended more largely for subsistence upon their
cattle, and they were also hunters and trappers in the great belts of
woodland or marsh which everywhere surrounded their isolated villages.
They were acquainted with the use of bronze from the first period of
their settlement in Europe, and some of the battle-axes or shields which
they manufactured from this metal were beautifully chased with exquisite
decorative patterns, equalling in taste the ornamental designs still
employed by the Polynesian islanders. Such weapons, however, were
doubtless intended for the use of the chieftains only, and were probably
employed as insignia of rank alone. They are still discovered in the
barrows which cover the remains of the early chieftains; though it is
possible that they may really belong to the monuments of a yet earlier
race. But iron was certainly employed by the English, at least, from
about the first century of the Christian era, and its use was perhaps
introduced into the marshlands of Sleswick by the Germanic conquerors of
the north. Even at this early date, abundant proof exists of mercantile
intercourse with the Roman world (prob