BEFORE THE RESTORATION.

17

emphatically islanders, islanders not merely in geographical chap.*position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their man-ners. Then first appeared with distinctness that constitutionwhich has ever since, through all changes, preserved its iden-tity; that constitution of which all the other free constitutionsin the world are copies, and which, in spite of some defects,deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great so-ciety has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it wasthat the House of Commons, the archetype of all the repre-sentative assemblies which now meet, either in the old or inthe new world, held its first sittings. Then it was that thecommon law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly be-came a not unworthy rival of the imperial jurisprudence.

Then it w r as that the courage of those sailors who manned therude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of Englandterrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient col-leges which still exist at both the great national seats of learn-ing were founded. Then was formed that language, lessmusical indeed than the languages of the south, but in force,in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of thepoet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongueof Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn ofthat noble literature, the most splendid and the most durableof the many glories of England.

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of theraces was all but complete; and it was soon made manifest,by signs not to be mistaken, that a people inferior to noneexisting in the world had been formed by the mixture of threebranches of the great Teutonic family with each other, andwith the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed, scarcelyany thing in common between the England to which John hadbeen chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from whichthe armies of Edward the Third went forth to conquerFrance.

Macaulay, History. I. 2