THE ANGLES OF GERMANY--IMPERFECT RECONSTRUCTION OF THEIR HISTORY-- THEIR HEROIC AGE.--BEOWULF.--CONQUEST OF ANGLEN.--ANECDOTE FROM PROCOPIUS.--THEIR REDUCTION UNDER THE CARLOVINGIAN DYNASTY.--THE ANGLES OF THURINGIA. As the previous chapter has shewn that a Saxon population, considered simply as such, and without reference to the particular fact of its date, locality, and similar important circumstances, may be in any or no ethnological relation to the Angle (_i.e._, absolutely Angle under a Keltic name, or, on the other hand, as little Angle as the Slavonians), the attempt at the reconstruction of the history of all the Germanic conquerors of Britain during the period of their occupation of Germany, although, perhaps, not impracticable as the subject of a special investigation, and as the matter of an elaborate monograph, must, in a sketch like the present, be limited to that of the unequivocal and undoubted Angles--this meaning those who are not only _Angle_ in reality, but whose actions are described under the name of _Angle_. It is only when this is the case that we can be sure of our men. A Saxon, as aforesaid, may be anything, provided he be but a pirate. The greater part, too, of the actions of the _Saxons_ can be shewn to have been effected by the _Old_-Saxons rather than the _Anglo_-Saxons, and even by Franks and Frisians. Indeed, it is not too much to assert that, with the exception of the invasion of Britain and Sleswick, there is no recorded act of any Saxon population which cannot be more fairly attributed to some of the other allied sections of the Germanic stock than to the Angle. That this was the case with the Saxons of the Gallic frontier--the Saxons that, in the earlier periods of their history, came into collision with Julian, and, in the later ones, with Charlemagne, is undoubted; and, that it was also the case with the earlier Saxon pirates of the coasts of Gaul and Britain is likely--though I do not press this point. What I am considering now is the _unequivocal_ history of the Angles of Germany under their own proper name. I have said that it is fragmentary. It is more than this. The fragments themselves are heterogeneous. An Englishman, representing as he does the _insular_ Angles, and looking to the part that _they_ have played in the world, may, with either pride or regret, as the case may be, say that on their native soil of Germany, the Angle history is next to a non-entity. It is like that of the Majiars of Asia. What our ancestors did at home before they became the Englishmen of Great Britain may have been of any amount of importance, or, of any amount of insignificance. They were deeds without a record. As to our own collateral relations, they suffered rather than acted. They have, indeed, a history, but it is a history neither full nor glorious.