Be it a question which, among ancient nations, was most illustrious in deed and thought—the Jewish, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Egyptian, the Hellenic, or the Roman—there can be no doubt that the most illustrious race acting within the sphere of modern history is the Norman. And when we give them this local name, we do not mean to confine its comprehension to the descendants of the Rollo who bullied the King of France out of a province, or to those of the band of adventurous men who “came over” with the Conqueror. The real Norman who founded the institutions which still live to attest his greatness, was a mixed being, possessed of the hardy, enduring energy of the North, and the fire and versatility of the South. Most European countries have enjoyed his presence. France has largely partaken of it, so has Spain—though the spirit of the old greatness it produced has died, and the faded lustre of its memory only remains. Italy, Sicily, and portions of Germany, have had their share of these high-spirited wanderers; and indeed often, in the history of European states, might it be traced that, as if by an injection of fresh blood, the Norman element has saved them from immediate dissolution, if it has failed to confer on them a prolonged and invigorated existence. Greatest, however, of all the obligations to this race are those which we of the British empire owe; for the illustrious adventurers—whose spirit and energy sometimes seemed to consume and destroy the feebler qualities of the people on whom they were ingrafted—found among their Saxon brethren only a reinforcement of those steady and enduring powers, which had not yet acquired a sufficient preponderance in the composition of the Norman. To the character and tendencies of this race we owe the centralising influence which has given power to our democratic institutions. We owe to them the principle of honour, courtesy to women, social disinterestedness, and the many virtues which have grown out of the system of chivalry. In art, we owe to them the great system of ecclesiastical architecture, which, after slumbering for a couple of centuries, is now flourishing in so remarkable a revival, that every genuine vestige of it is preserved with pious care; and even a worshipful municipality, if it design to destroy a remnant of the art, as it would have almost been thanked for doing fifty years ago, is restrained from the act by a feeling of public indignation. The magnificent system which goes commonly by the name of Gothic architecture, is essentially the work of the Norman race, taking both the character of the architecture and the name of the race in a comprehensive sense.