The Evolution of an Empire: A Brief Historical Sketch of England — John Shaqi
The Evolution of an Empire: A Brief Historical Sketch of EnglandParmele, Mary Platt
History
The Evolution of an Empire: A Brief Historical Sketch of England
Parmele, Mary Platt
Great Britain -- History
And the Briton himself--what became of him? In Ireland and Scotland he
lingers still; but, except in Wales and Cornwall, England knows him no
more. Like the American Indian, he was swept into the remote,
inaccessible corners of his own land. It seemed cruel, but it had to
be. Would we build strong and high, it must not be upon _sand_. We
distrust the Kelt as a foundation for nations as we do sand for our
temples. France was never cohesive until a mixture of Teuton had
toughened it. Genius makes a splendid spire, but a poor corner-stone.
It would seem that the Keltic race, brilliant and richly endowed, was
still unsuited to the world in its higher stages of development. In
Britain, Gaul, and Spain they were displaced and absorbed by the
Germanic races. And now for long centuries no Keltic people of
importance has maintained its independence; the Gaelic of the Scotch
Highlands and of Ireland, the native dialect of the Welsh and of
Brittany, being the scanty remains of that great family of related
tongues which once occupied more territory than German, Latin, and
Greek combined. The solution of the Irish question may lie in the fact
that the Irish are fighting against the inevitable; that they belong to
a race which is on its way to extinction, and which is intended to
survive only as a brilliant thread, wrought into the texture of more
commonplace but more enduring peoples.
It was written in the book of fate that a great nation should arise
upon that green island by the North Sea. A foundation of Roman cement,
made by a mingling of Keltic-Briton, and a corrupt, decayed
civilization, would have altered not alone the fate of a nation, but
the History of the World. Our barbarian ancestors brought from
Schleswig-Holstein a rough, clean, strong foundation for what was to
become a new type of humanity on the face of the earth. A Humanity
which was not to be Persian nor Greek, nor yet Roman, but to be
nourished on the best results of all, and to become the standard-bearer
for the Civilization of the future.
[Sidenote: Teutonic Invasion, 449 A.D.]
The Jutes came first as an advance-guard of the great Teuton invasion.
It was but the prologue to the play when Hengist and Horsa, in 449
A.D., occupied what is now Kent, in the Southeast extremity of England.
It was only when Cerdic and his Saxons placed foot on British soil(495
A.D.) that the real drama began. And when the Angles shortly afterward
followed and occupied all that the Saxons had not appropriated (the
north and east coast), the actors were all present and the play began.
The Angles were destined to bestow their name upon the land (Angle-
land), and the Saxons a line of kings extending from Cerdic to
Victoria.
[Sidenote: English Kingdoms Consolidated.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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