army numbered sixty thousand.[95] In vain these Normans become transformed, gallicized; by their origin, and substantially in themselves they are still the relatives of those whom they conquered. In vain they imported their manners and their poesy, and introduced into the language a third part of its words; this language continues altogether German in element and in substance.[96] Though the grammar changed, it changed integrally, by an internal action, in the same sense as its continental cognates. At the end of three hundred years the conquerors themselves were conquered; their speech became English; and owing to frequent intermarriage, the English blood ended by gaining the predominance over the Norman blood in their veins. The race finally remains Saxon. If the old poetic genius disappears after the Conquest, it is as a river disappears, and flows for a while underground. In five centuries it will emerge once more. [Footnote 8: Malte-Brun, IV. 398. Not counting bays, gulfs, and canals, the sixteenth part of the country is covered by water. The dialect of Jutland bears still a great resemblance to English.] [Footnote 9: See Ruysdaal's painting in Mr. Baring's collection. Of the three Saxon islands, North Strandt, Busen, and Heligoland, North Strandt was inundated by the sea in 1300, 1483, 1532, 1615, and almost destroyed in 1634. Busen is a level plain, beaten by storms, which it has been found necessary to surround by a dyke. Heligoland was laid waste by the sea in 800, 1300, 1500, 1649, the last time so violently that only a portion of it remained.--Turner, "History of Anglo-Saxons," 1852, I. 97.] [Footnote 10: Heine, "The North Sea," translated by Charles G. Leland. See Tacitus, "Annals," book 2, for the impressions of the Romans, "truculentia cœli."] [Footnote 11: Watten, Platen, Sande, Düneninseln.] [Footnote 12: Nine or ten miles out near Heligoland, are the nearest soundings of about fifty fathoms.] [Footnote 13: Palgrave, "Saxon Commonwealth," vol. I.] [Footnote 14: "Notes of a Journey in England."] [Footnote 15: Léonce de Lavergne, "De l'Agriculture anglaise." "The soil is much worse than that of France."] [Footnote 16: There are at least four rivers in England passing by the name of "Ouse," which is only another form of "ooze."--Tr.] [Footnote 17: Tacitus, "De moribus Germanorum," passim: Diem noctemque continuare potando, nulli proborum.--Sera juvenum Venus.--Totos dies juxta focum atque ignem agunt. Dargaud, "Voyage en Danemark. They take six meals per day, the first at five o'clock in the morning. One should see the faces and meals at Hamburg and at Amsterdam."] [Footnote 18: Bede, v. 10. Sidonius, VIII. 6. Lingard, "History of England," 1854, I. chap. 2.] [Footnote 19: Zozimos, III. 147. Amm. Marcellinus, XXVIII. 526.] [Footnote 20: Aug. Thierry, "Hist. S. Edmundi," VI. 441. See Ynglingasaga, and especially Egil's Saga.]