These descendants of Woden, for such even the petty chieftains deemed themselves, whose trade was battle and whose glory was pillage, showed the spiritless what men do who know to conquer, the few against the many. They baffled the strong and they annihilated the weak. The Britons were grateful. The Saxons lodged in the land till they took possession of it. The first Saxon founded the kingdom of Kent; twenty years after, a second in Sussex raised the kingdom of the South-Saxons; in another twenty years appeared the kingdom of the West-Saxons. It was a century after the earliest arrival that the great emigration took place. The tribe of the Angles depopulated their native province and flocked to the fertile island, under that foeman of the Britons whom the bards describe as "The Flame Bearer," and "The Destroyer." Every quality peculiar to the Saxons was hateful to the Britons; even their fairness of complexion. Taliessin terms Hengist "a white-bellied hackney," and his followers are described as of "hateful hue and hateful form." The British poet delights to paint "a Saxon shivering and quaking, his _white hair_ washed in blood;" and another sings how "close upon the backs of the _pale-faced_ ones were the spear-points."[1] Already the name itself of _Britain_ had disappeared among the invaders. Our island was now called "Saxony beyond the Sea," or "West Saxon land;" and when the expatriated Saxons had alienated themselves from the land of their fathers, those who remained faithful to their native hearths perhaps proudly distinguished themselves as "the old Saxons," for by this name they were known by the Saxons in Britain. Eight separate but uncertain kingdoms were raised on the soil of Britain, and present a moveable surface of fraternal wars and baffled rivals. There was one kingdom long left kingless, for "No man dared, though never so ambitious, to take up the sceptre which many had found so hot; the only effectual cure of ambition that I have read"--these are the Words of Milton. Finally, to use the quaint phrase of the Chancellor Whitelock, "the Octarchy was brought into one." At the end of five centuries the Saxons fell prostrate before a stronger race. But of all the accidents and the fortunes of the Saxon dynasty, not the least surprising is that an obscure town in the duchy of Sleswick, _Anglen_, is commemorated by the transference of its name to one of the great European nations. The _Angles_, or _Engles_, have given their denomination to the land of Britain--_Engle-land_ is _England_, and the _Engles_ are the _English_.[2] How it happened that the very name of _Britain_ was abolished, and why the Anglian was selected in preference to the more eminent race, may offer a philosophical illustration of the accidental nature of LOCAL NAMES.