The necessity of getting as far as we can into the obscure problems connected with this word is urgent. One part of England is more evidently _Saxon_ than another; at least, it bears certain outward and visible signs of Saxonism which are wanting elsewhere. What are we to say to this? That Es-_sex_ is Saxon, and, as _Saxon_, something notably different from Suffolk which is _Angle_? It may have been so; yet the minutest ethnology ever applied has failed in detecting the _differentiæ_. They have, indeed, been assumed, and an unduly broad distinction between the dialect of Angle and the dialects of Saxon origin has been drawn; but the distinction is unreal. Angle _North_umberland and Saxon _Sus_sex differ from each other, not because they are Angle and Saxon, but because they are _north_ern and _south_ern counties. And so on throughout. The difference between Angle and Saxon Britain has ever been assumed to be _real_, whereas it may be but _nominal_. Let us suppose it to be the latter, and _Saxon_ to have been the British name of the _Angle_--nothing more. What do names like Sus-_sex_, &c., indicate? Not that the population was less Angle than elsewhere, but that it was more Roman or British--an important distinction. Again--certain Frisians are stated by Procopius to have dwelt in Britain; though Beda makes no mention of them. Assume, however, that the Saxons of the latter writer were the Frisians of the former, and all is plain and clear. But, then, they should be more unlike the Angles than they can be shewn to have been. But why refine upon these points at all? Why, when we admit the Nordalbingians to have been Angle, demur to their having called themselves Saxons? I do this because I cannot get over the fact of the king who first decreed that his kingdom should be called _Angle_-land having been no _Angle_ but a West-_Saxon_. That he should give the native German name precedence over the Roman and Keltic is likely; but that, by calling himself and his immediate subjects _Saxon_, he should change the name to _Angle_, is as unlikely as that a King of Prussia should propose that all Germany should be known as _Austria_. Of course, if the evidence in favour of the word _Saxon_ being native was of a certain degree of cogency, we must take the preceding improbability as we find it; but no such cogent evidence can be found. _Saxon_ is always a name that some one _may_ give to some one else, never one that he necessarily bears himself. Were the conquerors, then, of Sus-_sex_, &c., other than Nordalbingian? I do not say this. I only say that the evidence of their coming from the special district of Holstein does not lie in their name. Germans from the south of the Elbe would--according to the preceding hypothesis--have been equally _Saxon_ in the eyes of the degenerate Romans and the corrupted Britons whom they conquered.