Mr Kohl talks a whole boxfull of balaam about the identity of the islanders and the English. In the first place, he insists that _Hengist_ and _Horsa_ were gentlemen of Friesic extraction; and secondly, he compares them to a spirituous liquor: thirdly, he argues on the topic like a musty German bookworm, who has travelled no further than round his own room, and seen no more humanity than the grubby specimen his looking-glass once a-week, at shaving time, presents to him. What authority has Mr Kohl for this Friesic origin of Hengist and Horsa? Is there a port along the Elbe and the Weser, or on the coasts of Jutland and Holstein, which does not claim the honour of having sent the brothers out? Is not the question as difficult to decide, the fact as impossible to arrive at, as Homer's birthplace? But supposing the hypothesis of Mr Kohl to be true, he surely cannot be serious when he asserts, that the handful of men who landed with the brothers in Britain, have transmitted their Friesic characteristics through every succeeding age, and that these are discernible now in all their pristine vigour and integrity. Can he mean what he says? Is he not joking when he puts forward the "rum" argument? A little of that liquor, he says, flavours a bowl of punch. Why shouldn't a little Friesic season the entire English nation with the masculine force of the old Teutonic Frieslanders? Why should it? If Hengist and Horsa supplied the rum, who, we are justified in asking, came down with the sugar and lemon? If the beverage be milk-punch, who was the dairyman? These are questions quite as apt as Mr Kohl's, not a whit more curious than his illustrations. The points of identity between the Frieslander and the Englishman are marvellous, if you can but see them. The inhabitants of the marshes and islands are grave, reserved, and thoughtful; so are the English; so, for that matter, are the Upper Lusatians, if we are to believe Ernst Willkomm; so are a good many other people. The marshers have an eye to their own interests; so have the English. This is a feature quite peculiar to the marshers and the English. It may be called the _right_ eye, every other nation possessing only the left. Of course, Mr Kohl is perfectly blind to his interests, in publishing the present work: yet he is Friesic too! From the Frieslanders we have inherited our "English spleen." How many years have we been attributing it to the much maligned climate? We are starched and stiff; so are the islanders. The marshers dress a May king and queen at a spring festival. We know something about a May queen at the same blessed season. If these were the only instances of kindred resemblance, our readers might fail to be convinced, after all, of the truth of the Friesic theory. These doubts, if any linger, shall be removed at once. One morning a Frieslander carefully opened Mr Kohl's door, and said, "_I am afraid_ there is a house on fire." Kohl rushed forth and found