CHAPTER III.

The Past and the Present.

I. The past-The Saxon invasion-How it established the race and determined the character-The Norman Conquest-How it modified the character and established the Constitution-The Renaissance-How it manifested the national mind-The Reformation-How it fixed the ideal-The Restoration-How it imported classical culture and diverted the national mind -The Revolution-How it developed classical culture and restored the national mind-The modern age-How European ideas widened the national mould.

II. The present-Concordances of observation and history-Sky-Soil-Products-Man-Commerce-Industry-Agriculture-Society-FamilyArts-Philosophy-Religion- What forces have produced the present civilisation, and are working out the future civilisation.

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I.

AVING reached the limits of this long review, we can now

H embrace in one prospect the aggregate of English civilisation:

everything is connected there: a few powers and a few primitive circumstances have produced the rest, and we have only to pursue their continuous action in order to comprehend the nation and its history, its past and its present. At the beginning, and furthest removed in the region of causes, comes the race. A whole people, Angles and Saxons, destroyed, hunted out, or enslaved the old inhabitants, wiped out the Roman culture, settled themselves alone and pure, and, amongst the later Danish ravagers, only encountered a new reinforcement of the same blood. This is the primitive stock of its substance and innate properties is to spring almost the whole future growth. At this time, and as they then were, alone in their island, the Angles and Saxons attained a development such as it was, defaced, brutal, and yet solid. They ate and drank, built and cleared ground, and, in particular, multiplied the scattered tribes who crossed the sea in leather boats, became a strong compact nation,-three hundred thousand families, rich, with store of cattle, abundantly provided with corporal subsistence, partly at rest in the security of social life, with a king, respected and frequent

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assemblies, good judicial customs: here, amidst the fire and vehemence of barbarian temperament, the old Germanic fidelity held men in unison, whilst the old Germanic independence held them upright. In all else they barely advanced. A few fragmentary songs, an epic in which still is faintly heard the warlike exaltation of ancient barbarism, gloomy hymns, a harsh and furious poetry, sometimes sublime and always rude,—this is all that remains of them. In six centuries they had scarcely gone one step beyond the manners and sentiments of their uncivilised Germany: Christianity, which obtained a hold on them by the greatness of its biblical tragedies and the troubled sadness of its aspirations, did not bring to them the Latin civilisation: this remained at the door, hardly accepted by a few great men, deformed, when it did enter, by the disproportion of the Roman and Saxon genius-always altered and reduced; so much so, that for the men of the Continent these islanders were but illiterate dullards, drunkards, and gluttons; at all events, savage and slow by mood and nature, rebellious against culture, and sluggish in development.

The empire of this world belongs to force. These people were conquered for ever and permanently,-conquered by Normans, that is, by Frenchmen more clever, more quickly cultivated and organised than they. This is the great event which was to complete their character, decide their history, and impress upon character and history the political and practical spirit which separates them from other German nations. Oppressed, constrained in the stiff net of Norman organisation, although they were conquered, they were not destroyed; they were on their own soil, each with his friends and in his tithings; they formed a body; they were yet twenty times more numerous than their conquerors. Their situation and their necessities will create their habits and their aptitudes. They will endure, protest, struggle, resist together and unanimously; strive to-day, to-morrow, daily, not to be slain or plundered, to restore their old laws, to obtain or extort guarantees; and they will gradually acquire patience, judgment, all the faculties and inclinations by which liberties are maintained and states are founded. By a singular good fortune, the Norman lords assist them in this; for the king has secured to himself so much, and is found so formidable, that, in order to repress the great pillager, the lesser ones are forced to make use of their Saxon subjects, to ally themselves with them, to give them a share in their charters, to become their representatives, to admit them into Parliament, to leave them to labour freely, to grow rich, to acquire pride, force authority, to interfere with themselves in public affairs. Thus, then, gradually the English nation, buried by the Conquest under ground, as if with a sledge-hammer, extricates and raises itself; five hundred years and more being occupied in this re-elevation. But, during all this time, leisure failed for fine and lofty culture: it was needful to live and defend themselves, to dig the ground, spin wool, bend the bow, attend meetings, juries, to

contribute and argue for common interests: the important and respected man is he who knows well how to fight and get much gain. It was the energetic and warlike manners which were developed, the active and positive spirit which predominated; they left learning and elegance to the Gallicised nobles of the court. When the valiant Saxon townsfolk quitted bow and plough, it was to feast copiously, or to sing the ballad of 'Robin Hood.' They lived and acted; they did not reflect or write; their national literature was reduced to fragments and rudiments, harpers' songs, tavern epics, a religious poem, a few books on religious reformation. At the same time Norman literature faded; separated from the stem, and on a foreign soil, it languished in imitations; only one great poet, almost French in mind, quite French in style, appeared, and, after him, as before him, spread an incurable drivel of words. For the second time, a civilisation of five centuries was found sterile of great ideas and works; this still more so than its neighbours, and for a twofold reason,-because to the universal impotence of the Middle-age was added the impoverishment of the Conquest, and because of the two component literatures, one, transplanted, became abortive, and the other, mutilated, ceased to expand.

II.

But amongst so many rough draughts and attempts, a character was formed, and the rest was to spring from it. The barbarous age had established on the soil a German race, phlegmatic and grave, capable of spiritual emotions and moral discipline. The feudal age

had imposed on this race habits of resistance and association, political and utilitarian prejudices. Fancy a German from Hamburg or Bremen confined for five hundred years in the iron corslet of William the Conqueror: these two natures, one innate, the other acquired, constitute all the springs of his conduct. So it was in other nations.

of the race, we see at the

Like runners drawn up in line at the start epoch of the Renaissance the five great peoples of Europe let loose, though we are unable at first to foresee anything of their career. At first sight it seems as if accidents or circumstances will govern their pace, their fall, and their success. It is not so: from them alone their history depends: each will be the artisan of its fortune; chance has no influence over events so vast; and it is national inclinations and faculties which, overturning or raising obstacles, will lead them, according to their fate, each one to its goal,-some to the extreme of decadence, others to the height of prosperity. After all, man is ever his own master and his own slave. At the outset of every age he in a certain fashion is: his body, heart, mind have a distinct structure and disposition; and from this enduring arrangement, which all preceding centuries have contributed to consolidate or to construct, spring permanent desires or aptitudes, by which he determines and Thus is formed in him the ideal model, which, obscure or dis

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tinct, complete or rough-hewn, will thenceforth float before his eyes, rally all his aspirations, efforts, forces, and will occupy him for centuries in one aim, until at length, renewed by impotence or success, he conceives a new end, and assumes a new energy. The Catholic and exalted Spaniard figures life like the Crusaders, lovers, knights, and, abandoning labour, liberty, and science, casts himself, at the head of his inquisition and his king, into fanatical war, romanesque slothfulness, superstitious and impassioned obedience, voluntary and irresistible ignorance. The theological and feudal German settles in his district docilely and faithfully under his petty chiefs, through natural patience and hereditary loyalty, engrossed by his wife and household, content to have conquered religious liberty, clogged by the dulness of his temperament in gross physical existence, and in sluggish respect for established order. The Italian, the most richly gifted and precocious of all, but, of all, the most incapable of voluntary discipline and moral austerity, turns towards the fine arts and voluptuousness, declines, deteriorates beneath foreign dominion, takes life at its easiest, forgetting to think, and satisfied to enjoy. The sociable and levelling Frenchman rallies round his king, who secures for him public peace, external glory, the splendid display of a sumptuous court, a regular administration, a uniform discipline, European predominance, and universal literature. So, if you regard the Englishman in the sixteenth century, you will find in him the inclinations and the powers which for three centuries are to govern his culture and shape his constitution. In this European expansion of natural existence and pagan literature we find at first in Shakspeare, Jonson, and the tragic poets, in Spenser, Sidney, and the lyric poets, the national features, all with incomparable depth and splendeur, and such as race and history have impressed and implanted on them for a thousand years. Not in vain did invasion settle here so serious a race, capable of reflection. Not in vain the Conquest turned this race toward warlike life and practical preoccupations. From the first rise of original invention, its work displays the tragic energy, the intense and shapeless passion, the disdain of regularity, the knowledge of the real, the sentiment of inner things, the natural melancholy, the anxious divination of the obscure beyond,-all the instincts which, forcing man upon himself, and concentrating him within himself, prepare him for Protestantism and combat. What is this Protestantism which is being founded? What is this ideal model which it presents; and what original conception is to furnish to this people its permanent and dominant poem? The harshest and most

1 See the Travels of Madame d'Aulnay in Spain, at the end of the seventeenth century. Nothing is more striking than this revolution, if we compare it with the times before Ferdinand the Catholic, namely, the reign of Henry IV., the great power of the nobles, and the independence of the towns. See about all this history, Buckle, History of Civilisation, 1867, 3 vols., ii. ch. viii.

practical of all,-that of the Puritans, which, neglecting speculation, falls back upon action, binds human life in a rigid discipline, imposes on the soul continuous effort, prescribes to society a cloistral austerity, forbids pleasure, commands action, exacts sacrifice, and forms the moralist, the labourer, the citizen. Thus is it implanted, the great English idea-I mean the conviction that man is before all a free and moral personage, and that, having conceived alone in his conscience and before God the rule of his conduct, he must employ himself completely in applying it within himself, beyond himself, obstinately, inflexibly, by a perpetual resistance opposed to others, and a perpetual restraint imposed upon himself. In vain will it at first discredit itself by its transports and its tyranny; attenuated by the trial, it will gradually accommodate itself to humanity, and, carried from Puritan fanaticism to laic morality, it will win all public sympathy, because it answers to all the national instincts. In vain it will vanish from high society, under the scorn of the Restoration, and the importation of French culture; it subsists underground. For French culture did not come to a head: on this too alien soil it produced only sickly, coarse, or imperfect fruit, Fine elegance became low debauchery; moderate doubt became brutal atheism; tragedy failed, and was but declamation; comedy grew shameless, and was but a school of vice; of this literature, there endured only the studies of close reasoning and good style; it was driven from the public stage, together with the Stuarts, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and liberal and moral maxims resumed the ascendency, which they will not again lose. For, with ideas, events have followed their course: national inclinations have done their work in society as in literature; and the English instincts have transformed the constitution and politics at the same time as the talents and minds. These rich tithings, these valiant yeomen, these rude, well-armed citizens, well nourished, protected by their juries, wont to reckon on themselves, obstinate, combative, sensible, such as the English Middle-age bequeathed them to modern England, were able to suffer the king to display above them his temporary tyranny, and weigh down the nobility with the rigour of a despot, which the recollection of the Civil War and the danger of high treason justified. But Henry VIII., and Elizabeth herself, must follow in great interests the current of public opinion: if they were strong, it was because they were popular; the people only supported their designs, and authorised their violences, because they found in them defenders of their religion, and protectors of their labour. The people themselves immersed themselves in this religion, and, beyond the legal establishment, attained to personal belief. They grew rich by toil, and under the first Stuart already occupied the highest place in the nation. At this moment all was decided: be events what they might, they must

1 Buckle, History of Civilisation, i. ch. vii.