The work of the vikings is now finished: what is its sum? Three-fourths of the European continent has become Scandinavian, or has submitted to Scandinavian rule: thousands of lives have been sacrificed, and perhaps half the wealth of Europe has been plundered or destroyed. What is the compensation? We can only look to history for the answer. Here has been a great revolution; but revolutions are steps in human progress. Progress always demands as its price the best the age or generation has to give. The installation of the Goths and Teutons in Europe cost five centuries of woe and strife,—we can now see why; for it was destined to give the world a better civilization and a better leadership. But this leadership could not come from the Teuton alone: he is never prompted to enterprise in the world at large; he is never aggressive, he is strong only at home. Why then those six generations of viking conquest and mingling with the conquered, if not to supply this lack through the evolution of the British nation? That England is the leader of this Teutonic age, that she alone has extended and is extending the borders of Teutonic influence, that it was she who enabled Protestantism to triumph and freedom to prevail, that it was she only who could lay the phantom of mediæval despotism which Napoleon raised—all this is undoubted. But is her leadership after all due to admixture of viking blood? Has she not become mistress of the seas simply because she is encompassed by them? But island states do not grow strong by privileges of the sea; else would Ireland and Scotland have rivalled the power of England. Then there is a much larger Scandinavian element in the English people than is commonly supposed. We forget that Sweyn and Canute won England more through the Danes who were living there already than by the aid of new invaders from Scandinavia. We can also trace clearly in later England the Norse disposition and character. We can find it depicted in Chaucer’s Shipman (prologue to the Canterbury Tales, 388-410), who, after the lapse of four centuries, is still a viking of the old sort.