THOMAS E. PICKETT, M. D., LL. D.
Member of The Filson Club

FILSON CLUB PUBLICATION No. 22

THE QUEST FOR A
LOST RACE

Presenting the Theory of
PAUL B. Du CHAILLU
An Eminent Ethnologist and Explorer, that the English-speaking
People of To-day are Descended from the Scandinavians rather
than the Teutons—from the Normans rather than the Germans

BY
THOMAS E. PICKETT, M.D., LL.D.
Member of The Filson Club

READ BEFORE THE CLUB OCTOBER 1, 1906

Illustrated

LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
JOHN P. MORTON & COMPANY
Printers to The Filson Club
1907

COPYRIGHT, 1907
BY
The Filson Club
All Rights Reserved

Filson Club Publications
NUMBER TWENTY-TWO

The Quest for a
Lost Race

Alphabetical Series of Norse, Norman, and
Anglo-Norman, or Non-Saxon,
Surnames

BY
THOMAS E. PICKETT, M. D., LL. D.
Member of The Filson Club

PREFACE

The native Kentuckian has a deep and abiding affection for the "Old Commonwealth" which gave him birth. It is as passionate a sentiment, too—and some might add, as irrational—as the love of a Frenchman for his native France. But it is an innocent idolatry in both, and both are entitled to the indulgent consideration of alien critics whose racial instincts are less susceptible and whose emotional nature is under better control. Here and there, a captious martinet who has been wrestling, mayhap, with a refractory recruit from Kentucky, will tell you that the average Kentuckian is scarcely more "educable" than his own horse; that he is stubborn, irascible, and balky; far from "bridle-wise," and visibly impatient under disciplinary restraint. In their best military form Kentuckians have been said to lack "conduct" and "steadiness"—even the men that touched shoulders in the charge at King's Mountain and those, too, that broke the solid Saxon line at the Battle of the Thames.

Whether this be true or not—in whole or in part—we do not now stop to enquire. Suffice it to say that the Kentuckian has been a participant in many wars, and has given a good account of himself in all. In ordinary circumstances, too, he is invincibly loyal to his native State; and when it happened that, in the spring of 1906, there came to Kentuckians in exile, an order or command from the hospitable Governor of Kentucky to return at once to the State, they responded with the alacrity of distant retainers to a signal from the hereditary Chieftain of the Clan. "Now," said they, "the lid will be put on and the latch-string left out."

When the reflux current set in it was simply prodigious—quite as formidable to the unaccustomed eye as the fieldward rushing of a host; and it was in the immediate presence of that portentous ethnic phenomenon that the paper upon the "Lost Race" was first published;—appearing in a local journal of ability and repute, and serving in some measure as a contribution to the entertainment of the guests that were now crowding every avenue of approach.

It is not strange that the generous Kentuckians, then only upon hospitable thoughts intent, should imagine for one happy quart d'heure that the "Lost Race" of the morning paper was already knocking at their doors. But they little imagined—these good Kentuckians—that their hospitable suspicion had really a basis of historic truth.

The handsome book now launched from the Louisville press is merely that ephemeral contribution to a morning paper,[1] presented in a revised and expanded form, with such illustrations as could come only from the liberal disposition and cultivated taste of Colonel R. T. Durrett, the President of The Filson Club. The title which the writer has given the book is recommended, in part, by the example of a great writer of romance, who held that the name of the book should give no indication of the nature of the tale. If the indulgent reader should be unconvinced by the "argument" that is implied in almost every paragraph, it is hoped that he will at least derive some entertainment from the copious flow of reminiscential and discursive talk. The book is addressed chiefly to those persons who may have the patience to read it and the intelligence to perceive that nothing it contains is written with a too serious intent.

The writer makes grateful acknowledgments to the many friends who have encouraged him with approval and advice in the preparation of the work. For the correction of his errors and the continuance of his labors he looks with confident expectation to the Scholars of the State.

[INTRODUCTION]

While the Home-Coming Kentuckians were enjoying their meeting, in Louisville, in the month of June, 1906, Doctor Thomas E. Pickett published a newspaper article which he had written for the Home-Coming Week, the object of which was to present the theory of Paul B. Du Chaillu as to the descent of the English-speaking people from the Scandinavians instead of the Teutons; and to show that the descendants of these Scandinavians were still existing in different countries, and especially in Kentucky. The author sent me a copy of his article, and after reading it I deemed it an ethnological paper worthy of a more certain and enduring preservation than a daily newspaper could promise, and concluded that it would be suitable for one of the publications of The Filson Club. I wrote to the author about it, and suggested that if he could enlarge it enough to make one of the annual publications of the Club, of the usual number of pages, and have it ready in time, it might be issued for the Club publication of 1907. The author did as I suggested, and the book to which this is intended as an introduction is number twentytwo of The Filson Club publications, entitled "The Quest for a Lost Race," by Thomas E. Pickett, M. D., LL. D., member of The Filson Club.

Many persons of the English-speaking race of to-day believe that the English originated in England. The race doubtless was formed there, but it came of different peoples, principally foreign, who only consolidated upon English soil. Half a dozen or more alien races combined with one native to make the English as we now know them, and many years of contention and change were required to weld the discordant elements into a homogeneous whole.

The original inhabitants of England, found there by Julius Cæsar fifty-five years before the Christian era and then first made known to history, were Celts, who were a part of the great Aryan branch of the Caucasian race. Their numbers have been estimated at 760,000, and they were divided into thirty-eight different tribes with a chief or sovereign for each tribe. They were neither barbarians nor savages in the strict sense of these terms. They were civilized enough to make clothes of the skins of the wild animals they killed for food; to work in metals, to make money of copper and weapons of iron, to have a form of government, to build cabins in which to live, to cultivate the soil for food, and to construct war chariots with long scythes at the sides to mow down the enemy as trained horses whirled the chariots through their ranks. They had military organizations, with large armies commanded by such generals as Cassivelaunus, Cunobelin, Galgacus, Vortigern, and Caractacus, and once one of their queens named Boadicea led 230,000 soldiers against the Romans. The bravery with which Caractacus commanded his troops, and the eloquence with which he defended himself and his country before the Emperor Claudius when taken before him in irons to grace a Roman triumph, compelled that prejudiced sovereign to order the prisoner's chains thrown off and him and his family to be set at liberty. There were enough brave men and true like Caractacus among these Celts, whose country was being invaded and desolated, to have secured to the race a better fate than befell them. After being slaughtered and driven into exile into Brittany and the mountains of Wales by Roman, Saxon, and Dane for eight hundred years, the few of them that were left alive were not well enough remembered even to have their name attached to their own country.

The Celt was entirely ignored and a name combined of those of two of the conquerors given to their country. Who will now say that Anglo-Saxon is a more appropriate name for historic England than the original Albion, or Britannia, or Norman-French, or Celt? Anglo-Saxon, compounded of Anglen and Saxon, the names of two tribes of Low Dutch Teutons, can but suggest the piracy, the robbery, the murder and the treachery with which these tribes dealt with the Celts; while Norman-French reminds us of the courage, the endurance, and the refinement which were infused into the English by the Norman Conquest. Celt is a name which ought to have been respected for its antiquity of many centuries since it left its ancient Bactria and found its way to England without a known stain upon its national escutcheon. These Celts were once a mighty people occupying France, Spain, and other countries besides England, but their descendants are now scattered among other nations, without a country or a name of their own.

There may be doubts whether the Angles, the Jutes, the Saxons, and the Danes—all of whom shared in partial conquests of England and in the establishment of the English race—were Scandinavians or Teutons, Normans or Germans. They all belonged to the great Aryan branch of the Caucasian race, and whatever differences or similarities originally existed between them must have changed in the thousands of years since they emigrated from their first home. There can be no doubt, however, about the nationality of William the Conqueror. He was Scandinavian by descent from a long line of noble Scandinavian ancestors. The home of his ancestors was in Norway, far to the north of the home of the Teutons in Germany. In this bleak land of Arctic cold and sterility, on the western coast of Norway, where innumerable islands form a kind of sea-wall along the shore, his ancestor, Rognvald, who was a great earl holding close relations with King Harold of Norway, had his home and his landlocked harbor, in which ships were built for the vikings who sailed from that port to the shores of all countries which they could conquer or plunder. Here, his son Gongu Hrolf, better known as Rollo or Rolf, was born and received his training as a viking. On his return from one of his viking raids to the East he committed some depredations at home, for which King Harold banished him. He then fitted out a ship and manned it with a crew of his own choice and sailed for the British Channel islands. When he reached the river Seine he went up it as far as Paris, and, according to the fashion of the times, laid waste the country as he went. King Charles of France offered to buy him off by conveying to him the country since known as Normandy and giving him his daughter in marriage, on condition that he would become a Christian and commit no more depredations in the King's domain. Rollo accepted the King's offer and at once ceased to be a viking, and began to build up, enlarge and strengthen the domain which had been given him with the title of Duke. In the course of time his dukedom of Normandy, with the start Rollo had given it and its continuance under his successors, became one of the most powerful and enlightened countries of the period.

At the death of Rollo his dukedom was inherited by his son, William, and after passing through four generations of his descendants who were dukes of Normandy it descended to a second William, known as the Conqueror. Duke William, therefore, could trace his Scandinavian descent through his paternal ancestors back to Rognvald, the great earl of Norway, and even further back through the earls Eystein Glumra, Ivar Uppland, and possibly other noblemen of hard names to write or pronounce or remember. It is possible that some of his ancestors were with Lief the Scandinavian when he made his discovery of America, nearly five hundred years before the discovery of Columbus.

In 1066, Duke William took advantage of a promise, solemnized by an oath, which Harold had made before he was King of England, to assist him to the throne of England, but which he had not kept. Hence William invaded England with a great army, and at the battle of Hastings slew King Harold and gained a complete victory over his forces. Duke William was soon after crowned King of England, and at once began that wise policy which in a few years enabled him to lay firmly the foundation of the great English nation. His conquest, though not complete at first, was more so than had been that of the Romans, or the Angles and Jutes, or the Saxons or the Danes. At the time of the Conquest of William there were hostile Celts, Romans, Angles, Jutes, and Danes in every part of his kingdom. It was not his policy to destroy any more of them than he deemed necessary, but to make as many of them citizens loyal to him as possible; hence his numerous army and the still more numerous hosts that were constantly coming from Normandy to England in time became reconciled to the people and the people to them, until all were consolidated into one homogeneous nation. English history may be said to have begun with the Conquest of William, for all previous history in the island was but little more than the record of kings and nobles and pretenders contending against kings, nobles, and pretenders, and sections and factions and individuals seeking their own aggrandizement. The Conquest of William began with the idea of all England under one sovereign, and he and his successors clung to this view until it was accomplished. England never went backward from William's Conquest as it did from others, but kept right on in the course of empire until it became one of the greatest countries in the world, and this conquest was made by Scandinavians, who, if they did not make Scandinavians of the conquered, so Scandinavianized them that it would be difficult to distinguish them from Scandinavians.

The evolution of the English race from so many discordant national elements reminds one of the act of the witches of Macbeth, casting into the boiling cauldron so many strange things to draw from the dark future a fact so important as the fate of a king. Who would have thought that from the mingling of the Celts and the Romans and the Angles and the Jutes and the Saxons and the Danes and the Normans and the French in the great national cauldron that such a race as the English would be evolved? But it is not certain that such a race would have been produced if William the Scandinavian and his French had been left out. He came at a time when a revolution was needed in manners and language as well as in politics, and imparted that refinement which the French had gotten from the Romans and other nations. The French language so imparted soon began to infuse its softening influence into the jargon of the conglomeration of tongues in vogue, and the French manners to refine the clownish habits which had come down from original Celt, Saxon, and Dane. The Saxons and Danes had inhabited England for the four hundred years which followed the same period occupied by the Romans, without materially changing the manners or the language of the English, but it was not as long as either of these periods after the Conquest before the Englishman acted and spoke like a gentleman and belonged to a country which commanded the respect as well as fear of all other nations. The Scandinavian's fondness for war soon infused itself into the English and made them invincible upon both land and sea, and now with a land which so envelopes the earth that they boast the sun always shines on some part of it, they may look back some hundreds of years to the origin of their greatness and find no one thing which contributed more to the glory of England than the Norman-French Conquest.

But the reader had better learn the views of Paul B. Du Chaillu, an accomplished ethnologist and explorer, about the descent of the English from the Scandinavians instead of the Teutons as set forth in Doctor Pickett's book than from me in an introduction to it. Doctor Pickett explains the Du Chaillu theory, and gives examples of similar tastes and habits between English and Scandinavians which are striking. He also gives a long list of names borne by Scandinavians in England and Normandy eight hundred years ago which are the same as names borne by Kentuckians to-day. In this introduction, I have rather confined myself to such historic matters as are involved, without alluding to the ethnological facts so well presented in the text by the author. The work is beautifully and copiously illustrated with halftone likenesses of the author and Du Chaillu and by a number of distinguished Kentuckians of Scandinavian descent. There was both good taste and skill in placing among the illustrations the likenesses of Theodore O'Hara, John T. Pickett, Thomas T. Hawkins, and William L. Crittenden, who joined the filibustering expeditions of Lopez to Cuba. These distinguished citizens, like the Scandinavian vikings whom they imitated, lost nothing of their character by raiding upon a neighbor's lands, and are among the best examples of the theory of the descent of the English-speaking people from Scandinavians rather than Teutons. To be an admirer of this work it is not necessary to be a believer in the theory of Du Chaillu, that the English are descended from Scandinavians instead of Teutons. The truth is, all the northern nations connected with England were kinsmen descended from the same stock—Celts, Romans, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, and Danes all being of the Aryan branch of the great Caucasian race. They are so much alike in some particulars that fixed opinions about differences or likenesses between them are more or less untenable. There is one thing, however, in the book about which there can be no two opinions, and that is the value and importance of the list of names copied from records eight hundred years old, in England and Normandy. As many of them are the same as names now borne by living families in Kentucky, they can hardly fail to be of help to those in search of family genealogy. Doctor Pickett has presented in this work the theory of Du Chaillu in charming words and with excellent taste, as the theory of Du Chaillu and not as his own, and such has been my effort with regard to myself in this introduction. It is simply the resumption of a "Quest."

R. T. Durrett,
President of The Filson Club.

[ILLUSTRATIONS]

[CONTENTS]

THE QUEST FOR A LOST RACE
BY
THOMAS E. PICKETT, M. D.

[I]

Upon the northern border of Mr. James Lane Allen's "Arcady" there rises with picturesque distinctness against a range of green hills the pleasant old Kentucky town of Maysville, which, unlike the typical town of the South, is neither "sleepy" nor "quaint," but in a notable degree animated, bustling, ambitious, advancing, and up-to-date. It must be confessed, however, that here and there, in certain secluded localities, it is architecturally antique. Constructed almost wholly of brick, and planted solidly upon the lower slopes of the wooded hills, the site is indescribably charming, and, looked at from a distant elevation in front or from the elevated plateau of the environing hills, presents a pleasing completeness and finish in the coup d'œil. At one glance the eye takes in the compact little city, set gem-like in the crescentic sweep of the river that flows placidly past the willow-fringed shore and the walled and graded front. The scene is likewise suggestive, since it marks the northern limit of the "phosphatic limestone" formation which assures the permanent productiveness of the overlying soil—a natural fertilizer which by gradual disintegration perpetually renews the soil exhausted by prolonged or injudicious cultivation.

The town is of Virginian origin. At one time, indeed, it was a Virginian town. The rich country to the south of it was peopled chiefly by tobacco planters from "Piedmont" Virginia, slaveholding Virginians of a superior class.

In the infancy of this early Virginian settlement it was vigilantly guarded by the famous Occidental hunters, Kenton and Boone; the former a commissioner of roads for the primitive Virginian county, then ill-cultivated and forest clad: the latter, a leading "trustee" of the embryonic Eighteenth Century town. As we pass through the streets near the center of the place to-day we note the handsome proportions of a public edifice which has come down to us from the early mid-century days—an imposing "colonial" structure with a lofty, well-proportioned cupola and a nobly columned front. It is that significant symbol of Southern civilization—the Courthouse. To the artistic and antiquarian eye the building is the glory of the old "Virginian" town, since it appeals at once to civic pride and superior critical taste.

It was here—in the capacious auditorium of the Courthouse, and in the closing quarter of the last century—that a large and enthusiastic gathering of really typical Kentuckians, familiar from childhood with tales of wild adventure, greeted with rapturous applause the renowned hunter and explorer, Paul Du Chaillu, a native of Paris, France. A common taste for woodcraft had brought the alien elements in touch. The Frenchman was a swell hunter of big game, and had come hither to repeat his graphic recital of experiences in the equatorial haunts of that formidable anthropoid—the Gorilla. Du Chaillu's discovery of the gorilla and the Obonga dwarfs was so astounding to modern civilization that strenuous efforts were made to discredit it, notably by Gray and Barth. But later explorations amply vindicated the Frenchman's claims.

He had a like experience later. The adventurous explorer had come to Kentucky in prompt response to an invitation from a local club, a social and literary organization which owed its popularity and success chiefly to the circumstance that the genial members, though sometimes intemperately "social," were never obtrusively "literary." The social feature was particularly pleasing to the accomplished Frenchman, who was a man of the world in every sense, and who dropped easily into congenial relations with gentlemen who had an hereditary and highly cultivated taste for le sport in all its phases. Take them when or where you might, the spirit of camaraderie was in them strong. They told a good story in racy English and with excellent taste. They had studied with discrimination the composition of a Bourbon "cocktail." They had a distinctly connoisseurish appreciation of the flavor, fragrance, and tints of an Havana cigar. They had a traditional preference for Bourbon in their domestic and social drinking, but they always kept ample supplies of imported wines for their guests.

The genial Frenchman was very indulgent to the generous tipple of his hosts. He drank their Bourbon without apparent distaste; he praised their imported Mumm and Clicquot. He did better still; he drank the imported champagne with appreciation—a high compliment from such a source.

PAUL B. DuCHAILLU.

Clearly enough the harmony between the guest and his environment was complete. These courteous and loquacious Kentuckians were not only brilliant and audacious raconteurs, but with their varied experiences as sportsmen had a variety of marvelous stories to tell. When their stock of pioneer exploits fell short, they would listen with polite interest to their guest's weird stories of the African jungle, and cleverly cap them with reminiscences of a miraculous outing on Reelfoot Lake or Kinniconick. They were themselves experts with the rifle and the long bow, and were loaded to the muzzle with authentic traditions of the rod and gun.

The jungle stories were all right, but the African hunter was never allowed to forget that he was in the land of the hunter Boone. The very ground upon which they commemoratively wassailed had been consecrated by the footsteps of the great explorer of the West. The beastly "anthropoids" that confronted him were armed with tomahawks and guns. A salient point of difference indeed. The clever and daring Frenchman listened with smiling interest to their characteristic spurts of "brag," and was silently remarking, no doubt, its curious affinity to the gasconade of France. He seemed to feel perfectly at home. And who of us that were present can ever forget the impression of that dark, resolute face, the illumining smile, the gleaming teeth, and the kindly, humorous glance of the piercing eye? His experiences at the clubroom only partially prepared him for the peculiar impressiveness of the audience that greeted him at the stately old Courthouse. There were the same men, to be sure, handsome, graceful, courteous, smiling, and soft of speech; but the women!—with their lovely faces, their handsome dresses, their enchanting manners, their distinction, ease and charm! The Frenchman was never more of a philosopher than when he gazed upon this scene.

He told his tale of the jungle simply, but with a vividness that was realistic and startling to a degree. The fascination of the audience was complete. He not only described that strange encounter in the African forest, but he re-enacted the part, a representation which gave a curiously thrilling quality to the tale not appreciable when told in print, admirably as it is told in the author's famous book.

When the voice of the speaker ceased, as it did all too soon, the silent, fascinated audience, aroused from its strange African dream, broke into round after round of hearty, appreciative applause. For several moments the lecturer stood in a grave, thoughtful attitude, gazing intently upon the moving throng, not as though idly observing the dispersion of a village gathering, but as some philosophic tourist from another sphere, studying the aspect, the attitude, characteristic manner and physiognomical traits of an alien race. He asked but one question. Turning eagerly to the gentleman who accompanied him, he inquired with an expression of intense interest, as his glance fell upon a graceful Kentuckienne near the center of the throng—a lovely blonde with exquisite complexion, hair and eyes—"Who is our beautiful Scandinavian?"[2] The answer seemed to please him, and he walked thoughtfully toward the door, an object of respectful attention from the slow-moving throng, lingering as if it longed to stay. Though of small stature, he would have attracted attention anywhere. His figure was compact, lithe, elastic, and perfectly erect, his cranial outline (typically French) denoted intellectual strength and physical vigor, his facial contour was bold, regular, and pleasing—a singularly virile countenance softened and dignified by the discipline of thought. The crowd of which he is now the central figure is composed largely of men wholly different from Du Chaillu in air, stature, carriage, countenance, complexion, and racial type. Yet Nature seldom evolves from any source a solider bit of man than this gallant Frenchman from the heart of France.

The distinguished guest took his departure on the following day, not with a cold adieu, but with an airy au revoir—as of one who, charmed with his welcome, was meditating an early return. But was he pleased? Apparently he was, and if not, he had the Frenchman's happy art of seeming to be. If here simply for observation, he certainly found no degeneracy, but rather, we should say, certain pleasing lines of variation in the Occidental evolution of the race. It seems impossible that he should not have had a pleasant impression of his hosts—these genial sons of "Arcady," forever piping their minty elixirs with oaten straws, whose drinks even when "straightest" were not stronger than their steady heads—so hospitable to strangers, so chivalrous to women, so courteous to men, so gracious in manner, so happy in speech, so loyal to kin, so proud of their Commonwealth, their ancestral traditions, and their indomitable race. They drank naught from the skulls of their enemies, but they were adepts in filling their own. Their potations were pottle deep, and the intervals between were not needlessly prolonged. And yet they rose refreshed from their heady cups, ordered their stud a drench, and sighed for work.

KING WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.

The adventurous Frenchman was no glutton in debauch, but in a modest symposium could always hold his own, and doubtless imagined in this festal reunion of Bourbon and Champagne that he had re-discovered the Nouvelle France of the royal days when Louis le Grand was King.[3]

[II]

In the early autumn of 1889, the writer of this paper had the good fortune to be present at the Newcastle meeting of the British Association. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, standing at the very gateway of Scotland and looking out from the Tyne upon the great North Sea, is a famous old city in English history, that lay directly in the path of conquest and migration and was literally cradled in war, alternately rocked by Scandinavian or Dane, Saxon or Norman, Englishman or Scot. To-day it is big, prosperous, and progressive; even in the midst of peace perpetually sounding the note of preparation for war. True to its oldest and best traditions it is staunchly loyal to the Crown, proudly proclaiming its fealty on every coast, from the mouths of mighty guns cast in its own Cyclopean shops. From the days of the Scandinavian sea-rover through centuries of ruthless conflict she has stood out stoutly against the enemies of England, just as to-day her long sea-front of solid wall resists the encroachments of the Northern sea.

Here the shipbuilder is ceaselessly busy, constructing in his immense yards the great modern ship with its heart of fire and frame of steel. In any large yards the whole scheme of construction in all its branches may be seen at a glance, from the laying of the keel to the launching of the ship. The best work in modern engineering can be seen on the Tyne; and this is not surprising when we remember that upon the banks of this river the Locomotive was born, giving to this aggressive contemporary people a command of the earth as complete as their immemorial mastery of the sea. So enormous is the demand for fuel in the shipyards of the North-east Coast that it will take but a few centuries of work in these busy shops to exhaust the supply. The old proverb has lost its point. The most careless or unobservant tourist may see the steam-drawn trains "carrying their coals" to Newcastle, now, at all hours.

Nor does the Northern farmer sit with idle hands. All industries rest upon him. The farms are small, but the joint product is large. Thousands of farm laborers in Northumberland have each their "three acres and a cow." The Northern cattle-market in Newcastle would have filled the Highland caterans with delight. The weekly supply of cattle exceeds two thousand; the number of sheep is not less than twenty thousand. This was nearly twenty years ago. What must it be now? But even thus, how it speaks for the varied gifts and exhaustless vigor and vitality of this old Northumbrian race! Their rage for "river improvement" carries a lesson for men of their blood elsewhere. Between 1860 and 1889 the material dredged from the bed of the river Tyne amounted to more than eighty millions of tons. "Now,"—it was said at the Newcastle meeting—"there are more vessels entering and leaving this port than any other in the world." Among the outgoing vessels at that time was a gallant Norwegian barque which bore the name of "Longfellow." A few years before—a score, perhaps—the writer had seen upon a famous track in Kentucky a racer of great note who bore the same illustrious name—almost a contemporaneous compliment from widely separate branches of the same race. But what more enduring than the singer's own verse?—

"Once as I told in glee

Tales of the stormy sea."

A fit place of meeting—this old gateway of the North—for a select body of England's brilliant, busy, clear-headed and practical savants, and especially for that marvelously fruitful mid-century "section" which here first received supreme scientific recognition, having been organized at the Newcastle meeting by the British Association in 1863.

"THE MAP THAT TELLS THE STORY."

Though the youngest of the sections, its proceedings are singularly fascinating and the attendance always large. The meeting was held in the reading-room of the Free Library. Upon a long, low platform to the left of the entrance there sat facing the audience, a group, not of "scientists," but of really scientific men, their names as familiar to the English reading world as household words. The central figure of the group, Sir William Turner of Edinburgh, was the chairman of the section—a man of striking personality, who read a paper on Weismann and his theories which was listened to with closest attention, the novelty of the doctrines eliciting many expressions of doubt or dissent, though presented by the author of the paper with singular lucidity, fairness, and force. Sir William graced his position well, not merely by reason of intellectual gifts, but by virtue of a personal dignity which admirably comported with his commanding presence. He was a large, handsome man, with a robust frame, an erect carriage, and a notably aggressive air. Seated near him, and firmly supporting his somewhat heavy presence, were a number of men with world-renowned names—Francis Galton, famous for his studies in heredity and the publication of an epochal work; Sir Henry Acland, a learned anthropologist and medical scholar—a thinker of deep and varied scientific resource; Boyd Dawkins, the pioneer "Cave Hunter" and writer upon prehistoric archæology; John Evans, an able, learned, and industrious writer upon archæological themes; Doctor Bruce, the eminent historian of the Roman Wall; General Pitt Rivers, equally famous as soldier and savant, a quiet, dark-faced gentleman of easy, pleasant manners, dressed in the plainest fashion and judiciously expending an income of £30,000 a year. His large benefactions for scientific purposes made him truly a Prince of Science, gracious, munificent, and wise. The most striking and conspicuous figure in this solid English line was George Romanes, then in his prime and in apparently perfect health, tall, erect, dark-haired, with pale, handsome features and scholarly, high-bred air—a most impressive personification of intellectual pride and strength. As he sat in the midst of that animated group, cold, proud, silent but keenly observant, he vividly recalled the figure of the famous Kentuckian who once presided over the United States Senate, calmly noting the portents of impending war. In both, one easily discerned the same high qualities of intellect, resolution, and reserved force. By the side of the stately Romanes there sat the learned and vivacious Canon Isaac Taylor, slender, gray-haired, keen-eyed, alert, humorous, and full of tact—one of those clerical scholars and gentlemen who have done so much for English literature and have been a characteristic charm of English social life—men most admirably depicted by the novelist Bulwer in his better moods. Canon Taylor was the most animated figure in this noble English group. Near him sat two foreigners, each in curiously striking contrast with the other; one of these, a tall, ruddy, broad-shouldered blonde, with a strong, lithe, well-knit frame, an eager, alert expression, and a somewhat restless air, was the celebrated Scandinavian explorer Fridjof Nansen, then just twenty-six years of age, but already made world-famous by his recent explorations in the polar seas. At the left of the young Scandinavian, and presenting a remarkable contrast to that impressive figure, there sat a somewhat older man of small stature, of compact, vigorous frame, of clear, dark complexion, keen, clear, thoughtful eyes, and features typically French. The reader recognizes the description at once. It is our old friend, Du Chaillu, who has come to the northern coast of England, and standing in the very pathway of old Scandinavian invasions and confronting some of England's best thinkers upon their own ground, has calmly looked out upon the "grim—troubled" sea of England's Saxon King and boldly proclaimed his theory of the direct Scandinavian origin of the English race.

It was the sensational paper of the day, and even the most phlegmatic English scholar was stirred by this defiant bugle-blast from a philosophic French explorer who was not only disturbing the settled convictions of English thinkers, but still worse was running counter to cherished prejudices of the English race. That historic hyphenation of racial appellatives—"Anglo-Saxon"—was a sacred immemorial conjunction of names representing a fusion of racial elements not to be shaken asunder by a blast upon the ram's horn of a wandering Gaul. The assault was not altogether "Pickwickian"; but the Frenchman was a stout antagonist, and found an incidental confirmation of his theory in the occasional flash of Berserker rage which followed his masterly game of parry and thrust. Nor was he ill-equipped for his controversial work. From certain antiquities which he had found during his recent explorations in the North he inferred the existence of commercial relations between the Northmen of that period and the peoples of the Mediterranean Sea, Rome and Greece being at that time in direct communication with these seafaring peoples of the North. The tribes of Germania, on the contrary, were "a shipless people," and according to the Roman writers were still in an uncivilized state. He said there were settlements in Britain by the Northmen during the Roman occupation; that England was always called by the Northmen one of their Northern lands; that the language of the North and of England were similar in the early times; that the early Northern Kings claimed part of England as their own; that the Northmen were bold and enterprising navigators, pushing their explorations wherever a ship could survive the perils of the sea. On the contrary, neither the Saxons nor the Franks were a seafaring people, either at the time of Charlemagne or at any earlier period.

GENERAL GEORGE ROGERS CLARK.

It was this Scandinavian element which had infused a spirit of enterprise into the English race that they had never lost, and which had made it in all its branches, wherever they had sailed their fleets or pushed their invading columns, the invincible masters of earth and sea. Its resistless movement across the American continent, he declared, was the most dramatic spectacle in history.

This, in brief, was the Frenchman's startling theory; first broached in England on the borders of that rude North Sea which the Vikings had swept in early days, and upon the banks of the peaceful Tyne, where many a Scandinavian rover had moored his little barque. The discussion of M. Du Chaillu's paper took a wide range, all the distinguished ethnologists present—Dawkins, Taylor, Turner, Evans, Galton, and others—participating in this rattling ethnological debate. Du Chaillu, who had very much the attitude of a French suspect in a German camp, maintained throughout his Gallic aplomb, listening with admirable composure and with apparent interest, though his dark skin visibly reddened at times under the critical lash, however courteously applied. Canon Taylor, who evidently was in full sympathy with Du Chaillu's startling views, gave a happy turn to the little imbroglio by a cleverly parodied quotation from Tennyson's Welcome to the Sea-King's Daughter from over the Sea—

"For Saxon or Dane or Norman,

Teuton or Celt—or whatever we—

Saxon or Norse—it is nothing to me,

We are all of us one in our welcome of thee,"

the closing line being given with a politely sympathetic inclination of the head toward the gentleman from France, and with a gracious smile more expressive than his words—the smile interpreting to his hearers the startling disclaimer: "It is nothing to me." The clever ecclesiast read a very learned paper at the same meeting on a similar theme, and the two gentlemen who sat near him, Du Chaillu and Nansen, were ideal representatives of two of his four ethnological types, the Auvergnat type of Central France and the long-headed Scandinavian of the North. Indeed, as a matter for courteous rational discussion the question of "Saxon or Norse" had the profoundest interest for the amiable savant, who seemed to possess in perfection that fine philosophical quality of intellect which the French have happily termed justesse d'esprit—a quality of mind in which even the ablest disputant may sometimes be deficient.

But, nothing disconcerted by criticism or compliment, M. Du Chaillu remarked, with cold dignity, as he rose in final response: "Opinions, gentlemen, may differ in England from opinions in France, but the truth on both sides of the Channel is the same"—a sentiment to which all present responded with that fine sympathy and with that perfect courtesy "wherein—to derogate from none—the true heroic English gentleman hath no peer."

[III]

"Every schoolboy" (to quote Macaulay) is familiar with the salient facts in the history of the Normans; their origin in Scandinavia; the seizure of a fertile province in France (wrung from a fainéant heir of Charlemagne); their extraordinary evolution as the great ethnic force of the period; their absolute mastery of sea and land on every shore, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and notably their Conquest of England, their perfect fusion with the conquered peoples, and the resulting evolution of the English race. All this is commonplace to every historical reader. But recent investigators, going deeper, have inquired if the laws, institutions, language, and material constructions which mark the pathway of Norman conquest are simply the memorials of an extinct race? Is the Norman still living, still powerful, progressive, and prolific? Or is it an exhausted racial force, pithless, impotent, and effete, with no recognizable evidence of its ancient prepotency in racial struggles for existence in the conflicts of the past? Or, in a word, is it, as Mr. Freeman affirms, a Lost Race? The answer to these questions depends largely upon the answer to other queries, to wit: Was the conquest and sequential settlement of England merely a military invasion? or was it a vast popular migration such as America has witnessed in later times? or was it not in point of fact both—an invasion and a migration, the one following the other?

England was not conquered in a day. The battle of Hastings was decisive, but not conclusive. There was a long and bloody struggle before the invading force. Nearly four years (the duration of our "Civil War") of close, desperate fighting must be encountered before the work of subjugation could be declared complete. Every gap in the ranks of the invader must be filled by the importation of forces from abroad. There was a perpetual draft upon the Continental populations, and a ceaseless "rushing of troops to the front," precisely as in the protracted "War between the States." All Europe had become the recruiting ground of the Conqueror. He was peopling England even in the midst of war; and when the period of "reconstruction" came the stream of migration continued to flow. England was the bourn from which no immigrant returned; and under the military or reconstructive methods of the Conqueror, every invader was permanently planted upon the soil.

Apparently, these considerations furnish a conclusive answer to certain critical objections which shall be cited as we proceed. The facts upon which our conclusions rest are found, chiefly, in the official records of England and in the authentic annals of the Anglo-Norman races.

Here, then, we must infer the existence of an immense multitude of Norman immigrants mingling and eventually fusing with the subjugated race. What has been the result of this intimate commingling of ethnic elements upon English soil? Is it possible that so daring and successful a gamester as the Norman was lost in the shuffle when an auspicious destiny was directing the game? The writer of this paper thinks that he found in the great Library of the British Museum evidence that the Norman people are still a power upon this planet; to be as carefully counted with in the struggles of the future as in the conflicts of the past.

Recent investigation has disclosed the fact that contemporary records in England and Normandy—records of two different countries of seven hundred years' standing, relating to different branches of the same race—are so minutely detailed as to enable the philosophic enquirer "to trace the identity of families and even individuals, in two countries." And this has been done by placing the Great Rolls of the Norman Exchequer in juxtaposition with similar English records of the Twelfth Century. This comparative juxtaposition of contemporary official records of kindred races geographically separate has been made the basis of an alphabetical series of English or Anglo-Norman surnames, which is remarkably full, though necessarily incomplete since the compiler, a very able English scholar, was not in position to enumerate all the families then extant; but it contains five times as many names as the famous Battle Abbey Roll, and conclusively shows that the ancestry of the intellectual aristocracy of England was Norman. The Anglo-Saxon and the Dane were shown to be in a hopeless minority. The enquiry which resulted in the compilation of the alphabetical list was restricted entirely to surnames of a purely Norman origin still existing in England. A third or more of this English population is Norman, directly descended from the Norman migration that preceded, accompanied, or followed the Conquest.

Can evidence be more conclusive that the Norman was neither extinguished nor absorbed by the sluggish Saxon who accepted his yoke?

Mr. Thomas Hardy, in his powerful fiction, "Tess," plainly accepts the conclusiveness of these views. His heroine, though of humble origin, clearly owed her involuntary seductiveness and fatal charm to the transmitted potency of her Norman blood, and it is said that in certain secluded parts of England may be found to-day rural or village populations of the same class gathered about some old Norman castle, donjon, or keep; their Norman descent distinctly visible in their inherited personal traits; a certain characteristic combination of intellect, courage, beauty, and social charm distinguishing them at a glance from the dull, heavy, long-bodied, short-legged, unshapely Saxon of a neighboring town or shire. The same restless blood or the same spirit of adventure which brought the Scandinavian to Normandy and the Norman to English soil, in time drove him to the great settlements beyond the Atlantic Sea—settlements known by the English of to-day as "The States." Their brethren in Ireland followed in great numbers at a later day, and, wherever in recent wars the American flag has been unfurled, "the fighting race" has stood beneath its folds—always in force and always at the front, each with the line of battle beneath his feet and the fire of battle in his eye.

"We fight wheriver a gintleman should,"

Says Murphy, and Kelly, and Shea;

"We fight wheriver the fighting is good;

And here's to the good, straight fighting blood!"

Says Murphy, and Kelly, and Shea.

DANIEL BOONE.

Thither, too, came the indomitable Scot, precisely as he came in the Colonial and Revolutionary days. "The Lowland race," says Mackintosh, "Briton and Norman and Saxon and Dane, gave the world a new man—the Sea Rover, the Border Soldier, the Pioneer.... The folk speech, from Northumberland to the Clyde and the Forth, is Northern English or Lowland Scotch; and the future man of Bannockburn and King's Mountain is beginning to appear. He is the man with the blood of the Sea Rover mixed with the blood of the Borderer, and the soldier, the scholar and thinker, the statesman and lawyer, the trader and farmer." He is the man that crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains as a pioneer. He is the man that sat in the conventions that organized the State, and stood in an unbroken line in all the pioneer battles of his race. The earliest migration of the Anglo-Norman folk was to the Colony of Virginia, as many of the old Virginian surnames, Bacon, Baskerville, Boys (Bois), Cabell, Clay, etc., clearly attest; and the State of Kentucky deriving a large population of English descent from Virginia, we should naturally find a strong infusion of Anglo-Norman blood in the people of this State—an inference fully sustained by the transcript of Anglo-Norman surnames which the writer made from the list that he found in the great Library in London.

The late Professor Shaler is frequently quoted to the effect that ethnological research discloses the existence in Kentucky of the largest body of nearly pure English folk to be found on the face of the globe—that has been separated for two hundred years from the parent English stock. But the facts do not warrant the assumption that the Kentuckian is of purely "Anglo-Saxon" derivation. In him, at least, the blood of the Norman is not wholly lost. He is, however, as Professor Shaler says, an "Elizabethan" Englishman.

We print elsewhere a list of names familiar to Kentuckians, which clearly points to the same general conclusion. With more leisure and space this list might be greatly extended.

[IV]

But what are the characteristic traits of the Norman as we find him in his early habitat in France? We are told by a contemporary observer—Geoffrey Malaterra—that the typical or "composite" Norman of his day was prodigiously astute, a passionate lover of litigation, an eloquent speaker, skilled in diplomacy, sagacious in council, convincing in debate; a son of the Church, but not too deferential to prelates nor too precise in the observance of ecclesiastical forms; a bold and tireless litigant, but not over-scrupulous in his methods of procedure and not always strictly judicial in his construction of the law. "If he was born a soldier," said Edward Freeman, "he was also a born lawyer." In spite of this pronounced legal penchant he was swift (if not restrained) to disregard and override the law; in the phrase of the old chronicler, the gens was effrenatissima—recklessly wild, unbridled and dangerous, nisi jugo justitiæ prematur; daring, resolute, destructive in mutiny or revolt; seditious, piratical or even revolutionary, unless the reins of government were in strong and competent hands.

We had a notable mid-century exemplification of this "unbridled" quality of temper in the introductory razzia of Lopez at Cardenas. When the Kentuckians, whose unerring rifles had crumpled up the Spanish cavalry and successfully covered the slow retreat of Lopez to the sea, were followed by the pursuing warship Pizarro into the harbor of Key West, nothing daunted they coolly seized the United States fort, took possession of its batteries, and deliberately trained its guns upon the Spanish man-of-war. Gens effrenatissima, indeed. The fighting habits of the Liberators were notoriously loose (especially under tropical suns); but what is to be particularly noted in this instance is, that the reins of power in our highly civilized government were unpardonably lax. It is possible, however, that the reckless and "unbridled" conduct of the Kentuckians was due, in part, to the circumstance that the chaplain of the Expedition had been killed.

The subsequent official investigation showed to the entire satisfaction of our Anglo-Norman lawyers that practically everything had been done under "the forms of law."

The word effrenatus was almost overworked by Cicero. It perfectly described the Catilines of old Rome and the banded ruffians that wrought their will. But in his very lawlessness the Norman of Malaterra never forgot the law. He scrupulously observed its "forms." Even the Conquest of England was "justified" by a pronunciamento of legal assumptions subtly and elaborately drawn. The Norman was a shrewd and successful trafficker, and this tradition of commercial skill and thrift is current in Normandy to-day. When he settled on English soil or sailed in English ships he did not lose his inherited commercial instincts. He made England the trading nation that she is. An eminent Kentuckian, who bore the distinctive marks of Norman blood, once said to a group of keenly attentive listeners, "The meanest of all aristocracies is a commercial aristocracy." A like disparaging conception of a powerful adversary was implied in the remark attributed to Napoleon, that "the English were a nation of shop-keepers"—un peuple marchand. It was this same race of innocuous Anglo-Norman traffickers that crushed Napoleon's iron columns at Waterloo, and forever closed his conquering career. But the Norman, who was a soldier, a lawyer, a diplomatist, orator, hunter, horseman and trader, was also a successful cultivator of the soil, and the Norman agriculturist of to-day who reminds the tourist in his physical traits, hair, eyes, and complexion, and even in the intonations of his voice, of an English farmer of the Anglo-Norman type, bears a more striking resemblance to his English kinsman indeed than to his dark-visaged compatriot, the vigneron of Southern France. We must add, to complete the portraiture left us by Malaterra, that the Norman was a passionate lover of horses, of the breed immortalized by the genius of Bonheur; a bold equestrian, skilled in the use of arms; at home upon the sea, and literally reared in the lap of war. And he was also a brilliant orator, passionately fond of eloquent speech. From his early boyhood, says the chronicler, he assiduously cultivated his natural aptitude for that persuasive art, that power of ready and effective utterance which, though often profane, made him dominant in the councils of war and of peace; in the cabinets of diplomacy, and even in the chamber of the King. Gens astutissima beyond all doubt.

To return to our beginning—what think you was in the mind of Paul Du Chaillu as he stood that memorable evening before an audience of mid-century Kentuckians?—this philosophic thinker who had been for years a critical observer of "the most dramatic spectacle in history"—the sweeping, ceaseless, transcontinental march of the Anglo-Norman race—what did he think of the environing conditions as he stood in that old Courthouse which had resounded with the eloquence of Anglo-Norman orators; which had echoed and re-echoed generation after generation to the "Oyez!" "Oyez!" of Anglo-Norman sheriffs? and which was still standing, an impressive memorial of days when the ground upon which it was built was the camping-ground of the dominant figure in this Westward march—the Anglo-Norman leader Boone or "Bohun"—a name which in its very sound or utterance (mugitus boum) was in "dark and bloody" times a challenge to mortal combat—a deep bellowing defiance of "battle to the death"?

What were his thoughts as he looked with wondering eyes upon that charming Southern matron with her fair, delicate features and high-bred air? Was the vision a vivid reminder of blue-eyed "Scandinavian" maidens with faces as white as their native snows and locks with the softened shimmer of the midnight sun? One must acknowledge that the very exquisiteness of form and tint made this a rare type, even in Kentucky, but there were many interesting variations of it to be seen at our great mid-century "Fairs"—from the rich "auburn" of Marie Stuart to the "carroty" tresses of the Virgin Queen—framing lovely faces and crowning tall, willowy figures of queenly mold. But probably the prevailing tint of hair was that ascribed by the wizard romancer to the Lady Rowena—with her dash of Scandinavian blood—something between flaxen and brown; all in clear and brilliant contrast with a type that glowed with the superb brunette finish of Southern and Central France. Had Du Chaillu been with us in earlier days we could have shown him likewise figures of a striking masculine type—tall, soldierly figures that might have graced the "Viking age"—men who, after the fashion of early Norman days, would have been equally at home in camp or court. One of these gallant gentlemen, whom many of us remember, was in some respects a striking counterpart of a Scandinavian sailor that figures in a late romance, "Wolf Larsen"; like him even in the soubriquet prefixed to his Scandinavian name; of gigantic stature and strength; big-brained, passionate, strong-willed, energetic, proud, combative and sagacious, with a deep instinctive love of the sea. But his chronic irascibility of temper, often manifest on trifling provocation in unbridled bursts of Berserker rage, sadly marred the brilliancy of his military career, and engendered deep and implacable enmities which brought his career as a soldier to a speedy and tragical close.

GOVERNOR ISAAC SHELBY.

In other respects he radically differed from Norsemen of the Wolf Larsen type. In his relations with his family and friends he was delicate, generous, and kind; the tenderest of sons, the kindest brother, the most devoted and loyal of friends: a lover of literature, music, and the finer pleasures of social life. Strangest of all, he was reverent and devout. He respected the forms of the Church, and every night, even in the rude environment of the camp, he knelt beside his soldier's couch and repeated the Lord's Prayer. But the soubriquet fastened upon him both by resentful enemies and admiring friends recalls his fictitious counterpart—Wolf Larsen. Whenever the name of the Federal commander came up for discussion during our great Civil War—whether in Confederate camp or by Kentucky firesides, or by the campfires of his own loyal division—he was invariably known, by reason of his huge figure, his big bovine head, his flaming black eyes, his fierce, tumultuous energies, his headlong courage and gigantic strength, by the soubriquet "Bull"—BULL NELSON—a sea-trained soldier with a bellowing soubriquet prefixed to an honored racial name—a mid-century Kentuckian, who in mediæval battle might have swung the battle-axe of Front-de-Bœuf.

There were many others—Kentuckians of an ideal Anglo-Norman type—who would have brought to M. Du Chaillu the strongest confirmation of his philosophic views had he visited us during the cyclonic "sixties," or in that halcyon interlude "before the war."

[V]

Returning now to the discussion of the masterly paper read by M. Du Chaillu at the British Association,[4] we may consider certain aspects of the question more in detail; conceding at the same time full credit to the ability of the disputants who dissented from the views expressed by the foreign savant. M. Du Chaillu was peculiarly fortunate in his critics. If his theory should survive the searching and trenchant criticisms of such men, his scholarship would command respect even if they should decline to accept his conclusions in full.

A loyal Briton does not lightly abandon what he conceives to be established or traditional views. This trait does not imply defect of philosophic insight or want of wide research. It denotes simply the influence of prepossession, opinionated habit, and conscious power. Nor is this influence unusual. Scholars differ even as "doctors" disagree. Dr. George Craik, whose name is familiar to every scholar of the English race, was liberal enough to concede, a quarter of a century before the advent of Du Chaillu as a Scandinavian protagonist, that the English language might have more of a Scandinavian than of a purely Germanic character; or, in other words, "more nearly resembled the Danish or Swedish than the modern German." The invading bands, he adds, by whom the dialect was originally brought over into Britain in the Fifth and Sixth centuries, were in all probability drawn in great part from the Scandinavian countries. At a still later date, too, this English population was directly and largely recruited from Denmark and the regions around the Baltic. Eastern and Northern England, from the middle of the Ninth Century, "was as much Danish as English." In the Eleventh Century the sovereign was a Dane.

M. Du Chaillu's theory rests upon other and perhaps stronger grounds, but these concessions from a thoughtful scholar at least will carry weight. The continuous existence of Scandinavian influence in England is suggestive of the circumstance that the Danish conquest of England preceded the Norman conquest by "exactly half a century." An Englishman (Odericus Vitalis), writing almost contemporaneously with the Norman conquest, describes his countrymen as having been found by the Normans "a rustic and almost illiterate people" (agrestes et pene illiteratos). And yet, says Dr. Craik, the dawn of the revival of letters in England may properly be dated from a point about fifty years antecedent to the Norman conquest. To what, then, must be ascribed this scholastic renascence? Very clearly to the intimate relations established between England and Normandy by Edward the Confessor. But there is no trace of the new literature (that of the Arabic school which was prevalent in Europe) having found its way to England "before the Norman conquest swept into the benighted old kingdom, carrying the torch of learning in its train." The name of Lanfranc alone gives splendor to that civilization which his genius created for the English race. He not only lighted the torch of learning, but he strengthened the reins of power. He restrained the lawless impetuosity of William the Conqueror; he imposed iron conditions upon the accession of William Rufus; he checked the atrocities, and finally broke the power, of Odo of Bayeux. His work was well done, and its effects are visible to this day. He was the real power behind the throne. It is not easy, says an eminent English writer, to trace through the length of centuries "the measureless and invisible benefits which the life of one scholar bequeaths to the world." But such was the life, the work, the bequest of this Norman scholar, who died honored and beloved even by the rude, sullen, and implacable race which had been subjugated by the Norman kings. But Dr. Craik, with all his liberality and learning, is not disposed to accept the theory of a great migration or settlement preceding, or accompanying or following, the Norman conquest in the Eleventh Century. To be sure, this theory was not elaborately or effectively presented until of late years; but Dr. Craik, writing as far back as the opening of our "War between the States," seems to contradict this theory by anticipation—"In point of fact, the Normans never transferred themselves in a body, or generally, to England. It was never thus taken possession of by the Normans. It was never colonized by these foreigners, or occupied by them in any other than a military sense. It received a foreign government, but not at all a new population." Yet even Dr. Craik seems to appreciate the lesson of "names." He thinks it remarkable, for instance, that though we find a good many names of natives of Gaul in connection with the last age of Roman literature, scarcely a British name has been preserved. Even in Juvenal's days the pleaders of Britain were trained by the eloquent scholars of Gaul. The significance of a name in determining family origin is a common assumption of our familiar speech. "That is a Virginian name," we say; and if we find many Virginian names in a given locality we naturally infer that the town, or the county, or the locality, large or small, was originally settled by Virginians. In one of our old Bluegrass counties two of these settlements were made in pioneer times, about two miles apart. One is known as "Jersey Ridge," the other as "Tuckahoe." If in both localities we find an English stock with Anglo-Norman names we should naturally assume a common derivation from the Anglo-Norman branch of the great British race.

JOSEPH HAMILTON DAVEISS.

But that accomplished philologist, Dr. Craik, seems to be quite in sympathy with the views of Du Chaillu touching the ancestral relations of the Scandinavian to the English race; and Dr. Craik's eminent American compeer, Mr. George P. Marsh, is not hopelessly wedded to fixed conclusions, and has by no means overlooked the obvious Scandinavian affinities of the English tongue. "Almost every sound," says the latter, "which is characteristic of English orthoëpy, is met with in one or other of the Scandinavian languages, and almost all their peculiarities, except those of intonation, are found in English; while between our articulation and that of the German dialects the most nearly related to the Anglo-Saxon there are many irreconcilable discrepancies." If to determine the relative proportions of linguistic and ethnic elements in dialect and race were "a hopeless and unprofitable task," this would seem to invalidate all general conclusions in the matter.

A few days after the very lively discussion of M. Du Chaillu's epochal paper in the Free Library of Newcastle, there appeared in a great newspaper a contemporary estimate of his views, which was received by its multitudinous constituency with profound interest and respect. It was the rolling voice of "the Thunderer"—the famous London Times. In all crises in the national life, the influence of this journal is felt. It is not a mere priestly oracle, silent except at times, but a divinity that never ceases to speak; clothed with strangely beneficent powers, and in the exercise of legitimate influence as resistless as the fabled might of the Scandinavian Thor. It forms opinion;—it fixes opinion;—it reflects opinion;—it gives effect to the popular will. It has been felicitously characterized as the "vast shadow of the public mind."

On the 21st of September, 1889, the Times, after a full report of the ethnological discussion in Section H, had this to say by way of editorial comment: "Perhaps the great sensation of the Section was M. Du Chaillu's paper, intended to prove that we are all Scandinavians.... This paper, combined with that of Canon Taylor, and the discussion that followed both, seemed to show that the time is ripe for a perfectly new investigation of the whole question of the origin and migration of the races which inhabit Europe and Asia; and, that, on lines in which language will play only a subordinate part."

Thus much for the startling theory discussed by the Anthropological Section at Newcastle.

In a subsequent correspondence, which appeared in the London Times, M. Du Chaillu challenged archæologists to point out remains in any other part of Europe so like those of the early Anglo-Saxons in England as the relics he figures from Scandinavia in England. It is not always easy to indicate with precision the cradle of an ancient race; and even if such remains were found on the coasts of Holland and North Germany, the discovery would not seriously affect the conclusions that seem to have been reached as to ancestral relations of the Scandinavian and the Norman to the English race in England and the United States. One might abandon altogether the main line of M. Du Chaillu's argument, (1) his careful analysis of the Sagas and other ancient documents and (2) his comparison of the antiquities upon which the challenge rests, and yet there would remain something more than a strong presumption that the animating principle of the English race, in its leading branches, is the Scandinavian blood. It would seem to be quite in conformity with the law of nature that the daring, crafty, and indomitable race which still shapes the political destinies of men, which is historically traceable in its schemes of conquest and subjugation for a thousand years, and which is precisely traceable upon geographical lines in its movements of colonization or war, should have derived its enterprising characteristics from the only race which has demonstrably transmitted its conquering and colonizing traits within historic times: to wit, the Scandinavian pirates that were conceived upon stormy waters, spawned upon an icy coast, and swept, apparently in a career of predestined conquest, from the waters of the Baltic to the ends of the earth. The nations shrank from the Rover in fear. The Frenchman, at least, learned to dread his power, and the Saxon submitted with sullen acquiescence to his rule. He sowed the seed of conquest with his blood, and upon whatever shore he drove his keel he planted himself fiercely upon the soil to stay. Is it to be supposed for an instant that this puissant racial force was dissipated and lost? Not so. The light, the fire, the sweep, the coruscating energies, the resistless currents, the driving forces are still there. The power is not "off"!

HONORABLE HENRY CLAY.

Nevertheless, it may be—to use the phrase of the London Times—that "the time for a new investigation of the whole question is now ripe."

[VI]

Those were stirring days in the old Northumbrian city by the sea. And to the utmost border of that ancient kingdom the busy populations were alive with expectation and hope. Little cared they for the Sea Rover now. He no longer enjoyed, as once, the freedom of the city and the sea. They were really as indifferent to the vexed question as the philosophic Canon Taylor humorously affected to be. The loquacious savants might settle matters to suit themselves; but there was another question, probably of equal importance, for popular consideration; and a question of far greater moment too, to a man with blood in his veins; a question which touched at once the pocket and the heart; to wit, the last of the classic races at Doncaster, the St. Leger and the great Yorkshire Stakes. Will the Duke of Portland's "Donovan"—a Southern horse of great beauty, speed, and "luck"—win in the coming contest with "Chitabob," the pride and hope of the North? There was anxiety in every face. The touts had come from their work at Doncaster, and Chitabob was reported to be lame; his old enemy (rheumatism) had seized his foreleg; he was not equal to a canter: could do only three hours' walk in the paddock near the ring. In spite of the conditions and the resulting consternation of Chitabob's friends, his nervy young owner insists that "matters are not so bad as they seem, and the horse will run." Meantime, the betting is against him—two to one on Donovan; in rapid sequence six—seven—ten against Chitabob. The situation was highly sensational; the state of excitement in Doncaster was intense; even Chitabob's friend, "Guyon" (a noted sportsman), had surrendered hope. The owner, young Mr. Perkins, was alone undismayed; and the men of the stalls were as game as the horse. "He can win on three legs," they declared. "I do not think so," said Guyon, "and though common sense prompts me to go for Donovan, I am full of hope and sympathy for Chitabob. The splendid fellow has always carried my money, and I will back him to-day. He is too grand a horse to let him run loose, but it is very clear to my mind that Donovan will win." The loyal sportsman proved to be an infallible prophet—Chitabob lost.

As one looks intently upon such a scene as this, Doncaster disappears and Kentucky rises on the eye. The story of Chitabob recalls the traditions of Grey Eagle, that superb and exquisite idol of the mid-century Kentuckian's heart; his brilliant and exciting contest with Wagner; his gallant start, his matchless stride, the vast crowd, the wild applause;—"the strained tendon," the slackened speed, the failing strength—the lost race. But the defeated racer was always (like Clay or Breckinridge) the idol of the State;—the Champion of Kentucky—as Chitabob was the Champion of the North.

Imported "Yorkshire" was, likewise, a famous horse in the history of the Southern turf, and his blood still mingles with that of our finest strains. We note in Kentucky a noble reproduction of the old lines, both in man and horse; it was entirely fit that such a Virginian as Commodore Morgan should bestow such a gift as "Yorkshire" upon such a Kentuckian as Henry Clay. It was a gift for a king, and there were marks of royal lineage in both man and horse; lines that were souvenirs of a royal race. Traditions tell us, and the casual traveler notes abundant proof of the fact, that the "typical Kentuckian" is indebted for many of his traits to the old Northumbrian blood. Even the familiar speech of the Yorkshireman recalls much that is characteristic in the dialect of Kentucky; as "mad," for angry or vexed; "thick," for friendly or intimate; "thumping," for big; "rattling good," for very good; "plump," for quite or entirely, as "shot plump through"; "whole lot," for a large number; "what's up?" for what's the matter? etc. Were not these words and phrases conveyed by racial migration from the North of England to Virginia and from Virginia to Kentucky in days lang syne? Have you never heard among the old horsemen of the Bluegrass the odd expression, "The colt will be two years old next 'grass'"? "It is curious," says Mr. Marsh, "that the same expression is used in Scandinavia." In Denmark and Sweden, he adds, as well as in England, the gentlemen of the chase and turf reckon the age of their animals by "springs"—the season of verdure being the ordinary "birth season" of the horse; and a colt, therefore, is said to be so many years old next "grass."

The same writer informs us that the names of the two brothers, Hengist and Horsa—both names of the genus horse—are words in one or another form common to all the Scandinavian dialects. A Danish colonel told Mr. Marsh that in a company in his regiment there were two privates bearing these names, who were as inseparable in their association as the Hengist and Horsa of old. An ardent theorist, like a jealous lover, may find confirmation strong in trifles light as air. It is a far cry from old Scandinavia to old Kentucky, but what brain is broad enough, what spirit is subtle enough, to comprehend the variety and infinitude of delicate, airy, intangible influences by which the busy hands of destiny have brought them together? Not the least of these agencies were affinities, customs, explorations, battles, contests, migrations, and the "wingy mysteries" of kindred names or words.

Edward Lee Childe, in his admirable life of his kinsman, General Robert Lee (Paris, France, 1874), says that in 1192 we find a Lionel Lee at the head of a company of gentlemen accompanying Richard of the Lion-Heart in his third Crusade. In the original the word here translated "gentlemen" is gentilshommes. A word of somewhat different connotation from its English equivalent, but sufficiently alike in meaning to justify the assumption that England is indebted to Normandy for the word, and, essentially, for what the word connotes or implies—the chief or leader of a family or gens. The followers of Lionel Lee were, therefore, a military élite. The original conception of the word still lingers among the Anglo-Norman races. That the word in its later English form has taken on a finer sense is illustrated by the famous speech of the Great Nicholas to Sir Hamilton Seymour. The diplomacy of the Czar neither asked nor conceded conventional guarantees. "Before all things," he said, "I am an English gentleman" (un gentilhomme Anglais). The word "cavalierism," used by M. Taine, reminds us that England, long before the Conquest, was indebted to Normandy for the "Cavalier"; that the "man-on-horseback" was the Cavalier; that the Cavalier and gentilhomme were conspicuous in the ranks of the Conqueror, and, not to be too precise, may be said to have come down the centuries together. In a certain conventional sense it is proper, no doubt, to say that the Cavalier in England was a gentleman; and, always, in Normandy un gentilhomme. But it was only in later days, as in the splendid epoch of the Stuarts, that the qualities of the gentleman, fusing with the character of the Cavalier, gave a peculiar dignity, elevation, and distinction to the natural and recognized leaders of the English race. But the bonniest cavalier, undisciplined by social culture, had precisely those defects of his qualities which the term "cavalierism" was invented by Sir Walter Scott to express. The qualities depicted in Esmond by Thackeray were not conspicuous in Scott's portraiture of "Claverhouse" or "Montrose." Gentilhomme, Cavalier, and Gentleman were descriptive terms evolved under similar historic conditions, and derived from the same linguistic source. An Anglo-Norman Kentuckian who figured conspicuously in the late War between the States humorously adjusted all differences as to the proper designation in that day, by addressing his friends in familiar conversation as "Gentle-homines," a felicitous appellative not only for Kentuckians, but for friendly Indians as well. The effigies of the "man-on-horseback" (a familiar phrase in English ears) was officially introduced to the English public by an English king, who in everything save birth and blood was typically Norman himself. It is indelibly stamped upon the Great Seal of England, and not upon one seal alone. The most casual inspection of the famous Guildhall collection will show, stamped upon Seal after Seal through a long succession of Anglo-Norman kings, the same equestrian figure which, obviously of Norman origin, had appeared in England before the Conquest; and which centuries later was designed by an Anglo-Norman engraver upon the Great Seal of the American Confederate States. The artist was Wyon (engraver to the Queen), and the original of the symbolic figure was that immortal Cavalier, George Washington—a man of Anglo-Norman blood.

It may be said that Kentucky offered physical conditions that were exceptional, for the production of "Cavaliers."

GOVERNOR JOSEPH DESHA.

A scientific explorer found upon the icy coast of the Straits of Magellan a growth of English grass—fresh, green, flourishing, and as full of fight for existence as the stock or race from which it took its name. It was like the grass described in the Hudibrastic skit of the bluegrass Colonel:

"Where bluegrass grew the winter through—

And where it blooms in summer, too."

It was a species of Poa, closely akin in its characteristics to Poa Pratensis, the famous Bluegrass of Kentucky —a cosmopolitan grass; at home everywhere, but always seeking congenial skies; rooting itself firmly and clinging tenaciously; standing in with the rich soils and the strong races; unseating old sod; standing off all casual intruders; driving out all competing grasses; casting its own lines in pleasant places; dividing honors with Zea Mays, the stateliest of all grasses, and yielding to no competition save here and there to the cryptic, mossy growth that at last covers with oblivion the homes and the tombs of men. Even the grasping, aggressive Poa yields to the power of moss; and mossback monstrosities may be found even among the vigorous offshoots of the Anglo-Norman race. Yet, was it not an extraordinary incident of the evolution of our Western world that in the genesis of the Commonwealth of Kentucky two such factors or agencies as the Race and the Grass—inseparably linked—should be predestined each to a special function in the common work? "Either," said a sagacious observer from New England, "no other land ever lent itself so easily to civilization as the Bluegrass region, or it was exceptionally fortunate in its inhabitants." The alternative suggests that if this miracle of evolution be attributable to either of the causes named—civilizableness of the land or adaptableness of race—then there can be but one conclusion should the result be ascribed to the operation of both. This speculative suggestion as to the genetic or determining element in the evolution of the Bluegrass State came from the pen of that gifted and genial writer, Charles Dudley Warner, many years ago. He was then visiting Kentucky, and reporting in a series of papers his observations, as a visitor, for an influential publication in the East. Please note this unconscious implication as to grass and race from a philosophic tourist of the olden times. "Grass" or "Race"—but what Race?

[VII]

The continuous application of three acute and powerful minds along the same line of thought, in the first half of the last century—an unconscious or undesigned collaboration (so to speak) of Lamarck, St. Beuve, and Hippolyte Taine—evolved a marvelous instrument of critical and philosophic research; furnishing for every capable thinker a method adapted to the investigation of all subjects, great and small; neglecting no phase, shrinking from no interpretation, rejecting no authentic fact, and having in perfection the magical quality of adjustment to conditions described in the Arabian tale. In his English notes, for example, M. Taine, if too frank, is singularly felicitous and discriminative in his physical descriptions of certain Anglican types of race—presenting, first, the beastly, repulsive traits of the MALE; the lowering, dog-like physiognomy, the huge jowl; the dull red eyes; the gluttonous chops; the swinish snout, the congested facial tissues; the gross, unwieldy figure, the bloated features and the protuberant accumulations of abdominal fat—thus graphically depicting, by way of philosophical illustration, an anthropoid incarnation of animal appetite. The picture is not flattering, but it certainly embodies some familiar traits, of which it is entirely pardonable to make a philosophic use. Next he introduces the Boadicean or Brobdingnagian FEMALE—"broad, stiff, and destitute of ideas"—with heavy features, lifeless, fishy eyes, coarse, congested complexion, a clumsy figure, large feet, unshapely hands, and an utter lack of style and taste—notably in the bizarre combinations of color in her dress. Moreover, he says, two out of every three have their feet shod with stout masculine boots, and as to their long, projecting teeth—huge white teeth—it is impossible to train oneself to endure them. "Is this," he inquires philosophically, "a cause or an effect of the carnivorous regime?" Plainly enough the cause—the remote cause at least—the determining cause, is what is designated by M. Taine elsewhere as "the hereditary conformation of race." These fat, huge, fierce, vicious, dull, ill-shaped creatures are distinctly of a Saxon strain. In Cedric's day they were the Gurths who herded the swine, and the "gigantic jades" who in the very teeth of Mother Church persisted in a merciless disciplinary "flogging of their slaves." Suggestions of racial derivation are seldom questioned in ordinary life. Every English thinker recognizes the fact. The biographer of an eminent English lawyer says that he combined, in the most pleasing fashion, fineness of physical texture with courage, high character, and the perfection of personal charm. The same writer thinks it necessary to explain that on the maternal side the gifted lawyer "came of gentle blood." Apart from personal characteristics, the very name of the maternal gens bore witness to her Norman descent—a name that has been familiar in Kentucky from the foundation of the State. According to the same biographer the conditions on the paternal side were quite different. An uncle, of the ruder strain, declared, in view of prospective Revolutionary tribunals, that his veins were "uncontaminated with one drop of gentility." He stood among the intellectual aristocracy of England just the same.

But, if the philosophic Taine is severe in his characterization of the "carnivorous types" of the English race, he makes ample amends in his descriptions of others. Not every Englishman is like the landlord in Barnaby Rudge—"half ox, half bull." "On the contrary," says this admirable Frenchman, "when the person is a cultured and intelligent gentleman, the phlegmatic temperament imparts to the English personality a perfectly noble air. I have several of them in my memory, with pale complexion, clear blue eyes, regular features, constituting one of the finest types of the human species. There is no excess of cavalierism, of glittering gallantry after the style of the French gentleman; one is conscious of a mind wholly self-contained, a brain which can not lose its balance. They elevate this quality of their temperament into a virtue; according to them the chief merit of a man is always to have a clear and cool head. They are right; nothing is more desirable in misfortune and in danger. This is one of their national traits." Taine's historic ideal of this type is William Pitt. The awkwardness and erubescent bashfulness, so often observed in English social life, "is wholly physical," says M. Taine, "and a peculiarity of Teutonic nations." It is certainly not the fine repose that is supposed to mark the caste of Never Care. Another type admired by this clever Frenchman is thus described: "The blond maiden with downcast eyes, purer than one of Raffaelle's Madonnas, a sort of Eve, incapable of falling, whose voice is music, adorable in candour, gentleness, and goodness, and before whom one is tempted to lower the eyes out of respect. Since Virginia, Imogen, and the other women of Shakespeare or his great contemporaries—from these to Esther and to the Agnes of Dickens—English literature has placed them in the foreground; they are the perfect flower of the land."

The Section of the Association at Newcastle which listened to the paper of M. Du Chaillu with an air of courteous self-restraint, listened also, and apparently in a like mood, to Sir William Turner in the reading of his very able paper on the pathological aspect of the doctrine of "Heredity," as recently expounded in the revolutionary hypothesis of Professor Weismann, a famous German pundit in pathology. It was the first appearance of the so-called Weismann "theory" before the scientific public of England. Professor Weismann rejects the view that the characteristics acquired by parents through their own experiences or environment can be transmitted to their offspring. It is only those characteristics that have pre-existed in the germ of reproduction: that is, the congenital peculiarities alone; those which distinguish the race and breed that can be transmitted, according to the teachings of Professor Weismann. A German philosopher, for example, may transmit a superfluous toe or a prognathic jaw, but not his portentously developed brain. Sir William Turner did not accept in full the German's "theory." Under the exclusive operation of a law which transmits only from congenital variations, how is it conceivable that the development of species can be brought about? On the other hand, does not the law of the survival of the fittest operate to correct the tendency to transmit defects of structure and organization? Thus, affirmed our sturdy Anglo-Saxon savant, the hereditary tendency, properly understood, is in perfect harmony with the theory of natural selection. It is needless to say that the Section and the speaker were quite at one upon these perplexing points. The conclusions of Darwin upon "Descent" were as little open to assault as their own conviction as to the origin of the Anglo-Saxon race. At all events, an Englishman's established opinions would not tumble at the first blast of a ram's horn from Germany or France.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
(Bas relief by a French Artist.)

The discussion of the physical peculiarities of our ancestors never loses its interest among the thinkers of the various branches of the English race. How trippingly upon the tongue of the Anglo-Saxon child come the familiar lines of the English poet, a bard of the Georgian period:

"Deep-blooming, strong,

And yellow-haired, the blue-eyed Saxon came."

a pleasing description of peculiarities which holds good of the Northern races to this day. But by a process of ethnic differentiation the separate or divergent races, with changed milieu and lapse of time, took on some structural change; the Scandinavian, for example (and possibly the Kentuckian), coming to the front with cranial dimensions exceptionally large and mental capacities to correspond. Laing's curious note to Snorro Sturleson (quoted by Lytton) says that in the Antiquarian Museum of Copenhagen the handles of almost all the swords of the early ages, in these collections, "indicate a size of hand very much smaller than the hands of modern people of any class or race." The Norman is said to have retained this peculiarity of physical structure longer than the Scandinavian from whom he sprang. It was probably the result of social conditions which soon ceased to exist. "Here and there," says an eminent English writer, "amongst plain countryfolk settled from time immemorial in the counties peopled with the Anglo-Dane (Scandinavian), may be found the 'Scythian hand and foot,' the high features, and the reddish auburn hair." "But amongst the far more mixed breed," he adds, "of the larger landed proprietors (comprehended in the peerage), the Saxon attributes of race are strikingly conspicuous, and amongst them the large hand and foot common to all of the Germanic tribes." (Lord Lytton.) Virginia and the Virginian States were peopled chiefly from the former class. If any inquirer wishes to prosecute this inquiry under favorable conditions, he may find a contemporary transmission of racial peculiarities in the vast Scandinavian population in our Northern belt or tier of States—men of the old blood, in a broad, congenial field, with boundless energy and big brains.

[VIII]

One of the most interesting results of a very prolonged process of ethnic differentiation is mentioned by John Fiske, in comparing two remote branches of the so-called "Aryan" race—the short, fat, pursy Hindoo, and the wiry, long-limbed Kentuckian. It is not incredible that these were simply original marks of race—"Scythian," in the one instance; Scandinavian in the other. It is a far cry, too, from old Benares to the Bluegrass; but it is possible that if missionaries from Kentucky could remain in Hindustan long enough there might be a gradual reversion of the Occidental variety to the ancient or original type. If Mr. Fiske's deductions be correct, as possibly they are, the Aryan brothers have wandered far apart, and perhaps it is hardly safe, in studying the genetic conditions of development in the Bluegrass, to stray beyond the broad, well-traveled highway that reaches from the Baltic Sea through Normandy and the British Isles to the shores of the Old Dominion, to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the "Hills of Breathitt," and the Bluegrass lowlands of Kentucky. The streams of population from the Scandinavian seas are still flowing, and in all likelihood the Scandinavians of the Virginian States (the old settled populations of the States of the South and West) will ultimately fuse with the Scandinavian populations of the North and establish in the heart of the continent the empire of the world. The great Scandinavian settlements of the Northwest are now almost equal in numbers to the Anglo-Norman populations that from the days of the Virgin Queen have been gathering and growing in Old Virginia and in the Virginian sisterhood of States. Coleridge once said that England's insular position had made her a mother of nations. It would seem that like conditions—an environing wilderness and an estranging sea—have helped to make Virginia a "mother of States." The lawless elements that poured into Kentucky were not segregated by social or other necessities, and, cast out by time or poverty, permanently isolated in one rude locality. This was at one time a popular theory among the savants. But there was always a tendency to lawlessness wherever the Anglo-Norman went. If any "convict" blood muddied the turbulent, brawling stream of migration, it was not from the race, but from the chance intermingling of a degenerate caste or breed, and whether you find that degenerate admixture in the rugged highlands or in the lovely champaign country at their feet, the convict blood is still there. In the highlands or the lowlands, in the mountains or the Bluegrass, generation after generation is weighted with the curse. The family, the clan, the community never loses the criminal taint. But the great, strong, daring, gifted race sweeps on untouched by the vile marks of degeneracy that would put a proud, ambitious caste to shame.

The trade of political assassination was plied with great activity in the good old Norman times, but apparently there was nothing that was beastly, or basely criminal, in the work; on the contrary, it seems to have been palliated almost invariably by the conditions of a traditional feud, and, where sentiment or authority was very exacting, the offense was sometimes justified under "the forms of law." This was not murder in any ordinary or vulgar sense. It was merely an indispensable modus vivendi in times that imperiled men's bodies as well as tried their souls; one of those protective devices conceived by the savagery of mediæval statecraft in a transition period of Christian civilization. Even at this day it is difficult for a competent and experienced Anglo-Norman jury to detect decisive evidence of crime when looking through the subtile meshes of a technical defense. William himself had a strong disinclination to take life under the forms of law; and, possibly, had his loyal guardians yielded to a like weakness in the early days of his succession, the solid fabric of English or Anglo-Norman civilization would now be as unsubstantial as a castle in Spain. But they did not share the weakness of their ward, and promptly settled the right of succession by assassinating all troublesome pretenders to the throne. The only sin of blood upon William's soul—"the blackest act of his life"—was the execution of a judicial sentence against Waltheof upon the hill of St. Giles. The only inexplicable crime of Waltheof's life was his murder of the brothers Carl, staunch comrades who had stood by his side at York. The judicial murder was wrought by the orders of a Norman king. It was apparently premeditated, and done with the utmost deliberation and under established forms of law. The Carl brothers were the victims of an ancient feud. Their grandsire had slain the father of Waltheof, and the grandsons of the murderer were slain to avenge this ancient deed of blood. They were the victims of a transmitted hate: of a vindictive passion that had lost its heat. But the murderer perished at last, under the forms of law which he had denied to the innocent victims of a feud. He could slay with impunity on his own account, but he was not allowed to conspire even in thought against the king. He, too, suffered the penalty long years after the offense. Waltheof was the last of the Saxon earls.

Not long ago that eminent publicist, Mr. Andrew D. White, delivered an address on the subject of "High Crime in the United States." The following excerpt will be read with interest:

"Simply as a matter of fact the United States is, among all civilized nations of the world, the country in which the crime of murder is most frequently committed and least frequently punished. Deaths by violence are increasing rapidly. Our record is now larger than that of any other country in the world. The number of homicides that are punished by lynching exceeds the number punished by due process of law.

"There is too much overwrought sentimentality in favor of the criminal. The young ward toughs look up with admiration to local politicians who have spent a part of their lives in State prison. Germs of maudlin sentimentality are widespread. On every hand we hear slimy, mushy-gushy expressions of sympathy; the criminal called 'plucky,' 'nervy,' 'fighting against fearful odds for his life.'

"It may be said that society must fall back on the law of self-preservation. It should cut through and make war, in my opinion, for its life. Life imprisonment is not possible, because there is no life imprisonment.

"In the next year nine thousand people will be murdered. As I stand here to-day, I tell you that nine thousand are doomed to death with all the cruelty of the criminal heart, and with no regard for home and families, and two thirds will be due to the maudlin sentiment sometimes called mercy. I have no sympathy for the criminal. My sympathy is for those who will be murdered, for their families, and for their children."

[IX]

The Normans were a brilliant and enterprising race; but what before all things (says Freeman) "distinguished them from other nations, was their craft." This was manifest in everything, at all times, and everywhere—in statesmanship, in war, in traffic, and in the trivial interactions of social and domestic life. Craft was no more characteristic of a Norman king in the past than of a Norman trader in modern times. It is as distinctly racial as the commercial "cuteness" or cleverness universally attributed to the American people of to-day. Lord Wolseley may have noted this trait when he said of our people, "They are a race of English-speaking Frenchmen." He may have observed, too, even during the War between the States, that Americans were at times exceedingly profane in their speech, just as in the olden time it was said that the Normans were "peculiarly fond of oaths." Camden tells us that when Carolus Stultus made over Normandy to Rollo, the rude ingrate refused to kiss the king's foot. When urged to do so he viciously exclaimed, "Ne se, by God!" "Whence"—adds the chronicler—"the Normans were familiarly known as Bigodi or Bigods." At every other word, he says, they swore by God. For a like reason, at a later day, the English were known throughout Europe as the English "Goddams." All of us know how terribly the army swore in Flanders. The profane tendencies of the race seemed to have been stimulated by war. "Then, the Soldier," says Shakespeare, "full of strange oaths." Was it not one of our innocent Bluegrass girls who declared that up to the close of her "teens" she believed the familiar phrase "damned Yankee" to be a single word? But it was the Conqueror of England and the founder of the Anglo-Norman race that swore the greatest oath of all. When the merry burghers of Alençon were hurling insults from their walls upon the burly son of Arletta and upon her sire—the tanner of Falaise—the infuriated Norman swore an oath which lights up the page of history like the flare of a conflagration—"By the splendor of God!" he exclaimed as he swept to his wild revenge. The profanest Kentuckian in his palmiest days never rose in his profanity to such a plane as this. He preferred the direct and trenchant speech of that Virgin Queen who helped to shape the destiny of our common race. "Do as I say," she said to a recalcitrant prelate, "or by God I will unfrock you!" Even her stately ministers were not safe from the fire of her Anglo-Norman wrath. In the royal council-chamber she sometimes fell to cursing like a very drab. In certain Virginian circles profane swearing seemed to have been proscribed except in a softened or attenuated form, such as "Jeems' River," as an ejaculatory substitute for a very blasphemous phrase. Thomas Jefferson did not regard profane "expletives" as a very rational or philosophic mode of speech; but George Washington, though puritanically truthful, would sometimes infuse into an imprecation the spirit and effectiveness of a prayer. We have all heard of Stonewall Jackson's "teamster" and the moving quality of his profane speech; but Jubal Early never allowed the words to be taken out of his mouth in this way. He did his own swearing, and, presumably, did it well. Swearing or fighting by proxy was not his forte. Judged by military results, Jackson's was probably the better method. As a tactical incentive upon the firing line nothing could be more effective than one of Early's oaths; but for general strategic purposes, nothing could surpass the effectiveness of the deadly imprecations that lurked in Stonewall Jackson's prayer. This was a Cromwellian modification of the Anglo-Norman oath. In the good old Commonwealth of Kentucky there seems to have been a relapse into the simpler forms of profanity—Anglo-Norman and Early English. The historian Collins tells us that one of the pioneer Governors having refused to notice the "challenge" of a truculent upstart, the fellow threatened to "post him a coward." "Post and be damned," said the old soldier, "you will only post yourself a damned liar!" The retort was profane, but it was in punctilious accord with the spirit and habits of the time. Better still, it was more effective than a "gut-shot" at short range. As a rule, the Kentuckian had an instinctive aversion for puritanic oaths. That consecrated phrase, "Jeems' River," had a brief career in this State. The last person to use it, probably, was an elderly, smooth, genial, charming gentleman at the bar who was for many years the judge of a local court in the good old County of Fleming. He was in many respects a marked exception to the common rule.[5] It might have been different had he left the Old Dominion at an earlier date. What brandy is for heroes, strong oaths were for the pioneer. Not mere dicer's oaths; nor the mauldin imprecations of a sot, nor the rounding touches of a raconteur; but good, honest, English oaths, such an oath as that which settled the insistent Corporal Trim—the generous and daring oath that our Uncle Toby swore when the young Lieutenant lay sick of a fever. "'He shall not die, by God,' cried my Uncle Toby." And the accusing spirit that "flew to Heaven's chancery with the oath" had the grace to blush when he gave it in. God bless our Uncle Toby; he was the Uncle Toby of us all, and is as fresh in our remembrance as the good old uncles who told his story and praised his virtues and swore his oaths by the family fireside in the auld lang syne. Tradition throws a strong light on one of these old Kentuckians who denounced with suggestive picturesqueness of phrase a ruthless master who had sold and separated a family of hereditary slaves:—"He is the damnedest scoundrel between hell and Guinea!" the old gentleman exclaimed, giving in effect a touch of lurid or local color to his imprecatory speech. But when one of his own negroes—a broken, helpless creature—was accused of marketing for his own benefit the products of the farm, he gently answered, "Ah, well, I am not sure that, after all, the old slave is not taking his own!" As one recalls that kindly speech, with its reminiscent touch of Uncle Toby, he recalls, likewise, the sentiment of a famous line from a foreign source tenderly adapted to a modern taste—

"Mais où sont les nègres d'antan?"

Where are those dusky bondsmen of the past? They mingle their dust with the dust of them they served: and resting in old country graveyards, in the peace of immemorial graves, they await the Morning Light and the Master's Call.

"OUR BEAUTIFUL SCANDINAVIAN."

Among the most popular of the well-trained African servitors of the mid-century days in the Bluegrass was our versatile drudge, Ben Briler, one of the most active and useful functionaries of that old-time tavern life.

"Ben Briler swept the poker-room—

And gathered up the 'chips';

Was 'mixer,' bootblack, cook, and groom,

And salted down the 'tips.'"

Evil days came to Ben's master, and Ben was sold—becoming the joint chattel of the young swells of the poker-room. But the joint chattel proved to be too versatile for his vocation, and one of the stockholders denounced him as "a damned kinky-headed corporation," and kicked him downstairs. As Governor Desha, in a recent message to the Legislature, had effectively arraigned those "dangerous corporations which embodied the interests of powerful men," the prompt action of the stockholder at the old tavern brought great relief to the public mind. It showed that corporations could be reached—that, contrary to the general impression, they had "bodies that could be kicked and souls that could be damned."

The advent of the abolition "emissary," the emancipated negro, and the "burnt cork" minstrel was practically contemporaneous in Kentucky. In the gentle mid-century days a company of strolling minstrels had announced an entertainment at the old county seat of Mason—the town where Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe (a frequent guest of Mrs. Marshall Key) first witnessed a "sale" of negro slaves. On the evening announced for the entertainment, the Courthouse was packed from floor to dome. Among the conspicuous figures toward the front was Colonel Robert B., a fine old Kentuckian of antique Norman type—tall, ruddy, high-featured, light haired; hearty, convivial, and profane—a boon companion and bon vivant. He sat expectantly but at ease, a bandaged arm resting upon the seat in front. He was cordially greeted by kinsmen and friends in every part of the house. The curtain rose and the minstrels filed upon the stage, looking for all the world like a lot of "free nigger" swells. Their very appearance was an offense, and provoked at once a collision with the young Mohawks of the town. The violoncello was shivered into splinters, and the flutes, fiddles, and castanets went singing through the air. No trace of harmony was left. There was a universal dash for windows and doors; none stood upon the order of his going. All went at once—all except "Colonel Bob," who sat unmoved, fixed to his seat as if fascinated by the moving scene in front. The spectators were amazed. "Hell's fire, Bob!" exclaimed an anxious friend, "don't you know there is a fight going on down there?" The Colonel looked incredulous. "I wish I may be damned," he said, "if I didn't think it was part of the play!" There was universal condemnation of these minstrel folk by persons who did not see the show; but the Colonel, who was a "stayer," insisted that "the niggers made a good fight."

Unquestionably there is a certain lack of modernity, or at least of civilized amenity, in such a manifestation as this: but there was a spontaneous and elemental vivacity in their unpremeditated assault upon the counterfeit African bucks which betrayed the rude fantastic humor of their Norman blood, and imparted a pleasant tang to the crude flavor of early plantation life. Mr. Barrett Wendell finds in the still earlier life of the West conditions described as existing in the times of the Plantagenet kings; and Mr. Owen Wister seems inclined to adopt his startling views. Apparently, then, we must count with inherited conditions and characteristics even in the politics of the times. The modern world is probably not ideally moral, but it is sensitively fastidious and scrupulously observant of "good form." It would wreck a railway, perhaps, or deplete a bloated insurance exchequer, but it would not launch an ungentlemanly imprecation or utter a trivial or unproductive oath. It even discountenances the oath in court— a solemn asseveration or attestation before a judge. It utterly discredits—socially and otherwise—the blas-phe-mous ejaculation or the vulgar "cuss-word," or the light conversational "swear" familiar in the dialect of the "back shop," the groggery, and the street. The variety of oath known as a "swear," considered psychologically, is not a very serious offense. In a philosophical aspect, indeed, it is in some sense a temperamental necessity, dependent on physiological conditions, and is essentially the result of a defensive or protective instinct. Where not merely idle, wanton, and unmeaning, it is a psychological regulator nervorum. It is the unpremeditated product of a prompt cerebral reaction. It gives the centers of speech a chance to rally when thrown into disorder by a sudden attack. There is no time for the picking and arranging of words, and, except in persons of lymphatic temperament, no capacity for the leisurely elaborations of speech. One is confronted, not with a problem, or theory or condition, but with an emergency that must be decisively met. Silence perhaps is golden, but there is a certain steel-like quality in trenchant speech. Profane, "rapid-fire" ejaculation is not only a deeply implanted instinct, but by frequent indulgence becomes an invincible habit—a habit so odious and offensive as to make even a Chesterfield swear. As a racial instinct it survives transplantation to any clime, and religious training of every sort. Even the disciplinary methods of Calvinism fail to eradicate it. But an "inherited drill" may at times soften, or modify, or mask the mode of manifestation, as is cleverly illustrated in the familiar lines—

"The Blue Light Elder knows 'em well—

Says he—'There's Banks, we'll give him—well!

That's Stonewall Jackson's way.'"

A Kentuckian casually encountering a distinguished New Englander at the buffet of an exclusive Eastern club, exclaimed: "Does a Puritan drink?" "I would not give a damn," was the decisive answer, "for a Puritan that could not drink, pray, and fight." It is probably no secret that in our amphibious Scandinavian, General William Nelson, the swearing instinct was abnormally developed. He did not swear "like a sailor," to be sure; nor "like a trooper" of the olden time; since neither soldier nor sailor of the ordinary type was ever gifted with his extraordinary abundance and facility of profane expression. It is but just to say, however, that at times he struggled manfully against the habitual inclination. "Christ give me patience!" he cried when his favorite aide, Colonel Samuel Owens (a joker of the Norman type), inadvertently "sat down" upon his military hat. The utterance was a sincere and reverent appeal for Divine help. He instinctively shrank from the coming torrent of profane ejaculation, and with a prayerful effort was bracing himself against the flood.

PRESIDENT JEFFERSON DAVIS.

"There is some soul of goodness in things evil"; but in this instance one does not lessen the force of the evil by modifying or "softening" the form of the oath. The essence remains unchanged. When Pecksniff slams the door in a rage, he simply "swears" what Hood describes as a "wooden damn." The devout Moslem will not tread upon a scrap of paper in his path, "Lest," he says, "the name of God be written upon it"; but the impetuous Anglo-Norman recklessly flings the name of God into the contaminated environment of his daily life. And he has done so, history attests, since the day he sprang full-armed upon the planetary sphere—the most portentous apparition of mediæval days. "Long ago," says Canon Bardsley, "under the offensive title of Jean Gotdam, we [the English] had become known as a people given to strange and unpleasant oaths." The very name—Jean Gotdam—vouches for its antiquity, as well as for the fearless sincerity of him who swore.

There came into one of our Bluegrass communities just after the war a clever Confederate adventurer, who speedily established very pleasant social relations by exploiting his military record. A venerable Kentuckian, who had come through the war with his Confederate principles and Virginian prejudices intact, was asked by a friend how he liked their Virginian visitor—the ci-devant "aide to General Lee." "I don't like him, sir," he said with vicious emphasis, "he is not what he professes to be; I never in my life heard a Virginian gentleman say 'God dern!' He either swore or he didn't swear." He had no indulgence for a marked card nor for an emasculated oath. He would not substitute a sickly, modernized variant for a venerated traditional form. By "Gad" or by "gosh" or by "gobbs" was good enough for a reforming purist; for himself he preferred to say, with the irascible Robert of Normandy, "Ne se, by God!" It is not the form, after all, but the sentiment or suggestion, that lies behind the "swear."

It is discouraging to the spirit of philosophic optimism to note the slinking figure of the iconoclast now running amuck in every field. The instinct and habit of reverence is almost gone, and the solidest traditional reputations are no longer safe. We no longer say with Wallenstein—

"There is a consecrating power in Time,

And what is gray with years to man is godlike."

Even the fine historic character of Washington is "at a discount" in the modern world—partly on account of his alleged indulgence in profane speech, but chiefly because of his recognized incapacity to tell a lie. He had not only lost (we are told by one biographer) the useful—the indispensable—instinct of "prevarication," but (as we are told by another) "when deeply angered, he would swear a hearty English oath." One may survive in the Darwinian struggle without the capacity to swear, but scarcely without the capacity to deceive. There seems to be no salvation in this life except for the successful liar; but for the man of many oaths there appears to be no salvation either in this life or the next. Happily, the material prosperity of Virginia was but little affected by the ethics of the Washingtonian Code. Her commercial instincts had been powerfully quickened in her early years by an admonitory imprecation from a royal, or official, source. When the Commissioners of Virginia were pleading the interests of "learning and religion" before the Attorney-General of Charles II (an Anglo-Norman lawyer, no doubt), he promptly responded with a hearty English oath—"Damn your souls! Grow tobacco!" There is no need for such an adjuration to the planters of the fine old Anglo-Norman Commonwealth of Kentucky. The tobacco will be planted, whatever may become of their souls.

[X]

An English scholar of sound judgment and exceptionally sound views has recently said that the Emperor Napoleon was the greatest administrator of all time. His greatest work, perhaps, is the system of administrative centralization which, through a century of the severest tests that political madness could apply, has maintained the conditions of social order even in the midst of war and under every form of organized misrule, and secured almost unparalleled prosperity for the municipalities and provinces of France. But it must not be forgotten that William the Norman solved a like problem with apparently even greater success, and under antagonizing conditions which only a statesman of original genius could successfully confront. Not for one century, only, of marvelous effectiveness in civic administration, but for eight hundred years of advancing and expanding civilization, the conceptions evolved by the Norman's brain have been doing their beneficent work; and great as was the genius of the Corsican adventurer, it is not incredible that even he, the master of Europe, did not disdain the lesson which had been taught the nations by that magnificent Son of France. The Corsican was a close student of military history, and secretly meditated a descent upon modern England in imitation of the earlier Conqueror's work. It is not likely that he would overlook the methods of reorganization that followed the war, with its machinery of sheriffs, judges, justiciaries, etc.—executive officers directly responsible to the king—bringing the throne in direct touch with the people, and drawing every subject, at least in every central shire, in direct personal allegiance to the throne. The Marquessess, or wardens of the Marches, were able and ambitious warriors whose sole concern was with dangers from without. But even Napoleon could not foresee, in this guarded initiatory recognition of the landowner, the ultimate evolution of a territorial democracy that was to affect the political and social destinies of the English race. Monarchs of a later date—Henry the Eighth and his masterful daughter Elizabeth—saw in the people the sole source of power; and the loyal Englishman even of this generation will proudly tell you that in his country the sole fountain of honor is the king. There were at least two American statesmen who were illustrious disciples of the Norman's political school. They were men of Norman blood, who wrought in American statecraft with the Norman's constructive brain—and there was still another of the same imperial strain who, with a philosophic conception of all that was of value in the principles of Anglo-Norman administration and a just appreciation by actual experience of government as a practical art, never failed throughout a long, brilliant, and successful career to teach the doctrine that the People Themselves were the sole fountain of honor and the exclusive source of power—a principle in the philosophy of government and in political administration equally patent to William the Conqueror, when he anxiously sought a declaration of "personal" allegiance from the subjects in that great gathering of potential "sovereigns" upon Salisbury Plain. In the long succession of administrators that followed the Norman king, there was none that seems to have grasped so completely and applied so skillfully his principles and methods of political administration as a daughter of the Tudor race. She may not have loved the people in any modern sense; but she knew their power, she recognized their rights; she studied their interests, and her jeweled finger was always upon their pulse. The best of all treatment, she thought, was to anticipate with soothing remedies the rude distempers of the times. She considered rather the Constitution of the Subject than the Constitution of the State; since, collectively, one embraced the other.

Mr. Barrett Wendell, in his admirable work, "A Literary History of America," discourses with great brilliancy and charm upon the Elizabethan influences that governed in a large measure the development of the Puritan and the Virginian race. The reader of the present paper will note with curious interest the bearing of the following quotations from this work upon the theories which the present writer has discussed. "Broadly speaking," he says, "all our Northern colonies were developed from those planted in Massachusetts; and all our Southern from that planted in Virginia." The statement is "socially" true, he says, to an extraordinary degree. The Elizabethan type of character "displayed a marked power of assimilating whatever came within its influence." This trait, akin to that which centuries before had made the conquered English slowly but surely assimilate their Norman conquerors, the Yankees of our own day have not quite lost. Our native type still "absorbs" the foreign. The children of immigrants insensibly become native. The irresistible power of a common language and of the common ideals which underlie it still dominates. This tendency, he adds, declared itself from the earliest settlements of Jamestown and Plymouth. "North and South alike may be regarded as regions finally settled by Elizabethan Englishmen." The dominant traits of the English race of that time were "spontaneity, enthusiasm, and versatility." But the Elizabethan English of Virginia, he says, were notably different in this: they were men of a less "austere" type of character than their compatriots of the North; of more adventurous "instincts," and were "men of action" as the New Englanders were "men of God." The peculiar power of assimilation and the "pristine alertness of mind" were the same in both. The economic superiority of the North was manifest; the political ability of the South seemed generally superior. Pleasantly putting aside the traditional claims of exclusive "cavalier" descent, Mr. Wendell says: "At least up to the Civil War the personal temper of the better classes in the South remained more like that of the better classes in Seventeenth Century England than anything else in the modern world." He frankly concedes that the most eminent statesmen of Colonial and Revolutionary days were Virginians. Recalling what has been said in regard to the constitutional sluggishness of the Anglo-Saxon, his mental inertness, his settled or stereotyped habits of thought, and his absolute lack of racial initiative until the Norman came, we read the following passage from Mr. Wendell with curious interest: "Such literature as the English world has left us bespeaks a public whose spontaneous alertness of mind, whose instant perception of every subtle variety of phrase and allusion, was more akin to that of our contemporary French than to anything which we are now accustomed to consider native to insular England." This transformation Mr. Wendell attributes to "the spontaneous, enthusiastic versatility of the English temperament," in the spacious Elizabethan days. What has produced or determined this extraordinary differentiation of race? What are the original, genetic factors behind this varied manifestation of power in that old, Elizabethan stock? With the advent of the Seventeenth Century; with the turbulence, and trouble, and austerity of Cromwellian days; with migrations following Cromwellian war; with the evolution of a transatlantic type of the English race, there came an end to those spacious and splendid days—to the creative, prolific epoch of the Virgin Queen.

HONORABLE JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE.

The most trivial fact that connects the name of Shakespeare with Virginia is of interest to the Virginian and his multitudinous clans. Captain Newport, Vice-Admiral of Virginia, commanded the ship Sea Adventure, which was wrecked on the Devil's Islands. Sir George Somers, sitting on the poop and misled by a flaming apparition on the masts, unconsciously guided the vessel in a fatal course. William Strachey, "Secretary in Virginia," wrote the account of the "Tempest" published in Purchas. Thus was the "king's ship" boarded and burned by the spirit Ariel at the command of his master Prospero, and wrecked on those "Bermoothes" which are "still vext" by that rude, tempestuous sea. It is of interest, too, to note that the special Supervisors and Directors of this Elizabethan colony were William Shakespeare's friends—the Earl of Southampton; the Earl of Pembroke; the Earl of Montgomery; Viscount Lisle (brother of Sir Philip Sidney); Lord Howard of Walden; Lord Sheffield; and Lord Carew of Clopton, who sold Shakespeare, in 1597, the house in which he lived till 1616—all of them Elizabethan cavaliers derived from Anglo-Norman stock. There is another Elizabethan name of still greater interest to all people of the Anglo-Virginian race—Sir Edwin Sandys, the author of the political charters upon which the free institutions of Virginia rest; and not only Virginia, but the United States. Educated at Geneva and the son of an English Archbishop, he was thoroughly seasoned with the doctrines of the Genevan school; and aimed not only to found the American Republic on Genevan lines by the creation of a "free state" on the Atlantic coast, but to make ample provision in the charter itself for the ultimate "expansion" of the young republic toward the Pacific Ocean. This statement may not, even yet, be universally accepted; but it is incontestably true.

[XI]

In the spring of 1885, a pamphlet was published by a citizen of Kentucky directing attention to the effect of certain racial influences in molding the institutions of this State. It was entitled "The Genesis of a Pioneer Commonwealth." The suggestions offered by the writer as to the sources of our organic life were subsequently illustrated and confirmed by an eminent Virginian scholar, Dr. Alexander Brown, in his "Genesis of the United States," published in 1890—a marvel of masterly investigation; a work which throws a flood of light upon the broad expanse of early American history, and is especially remarkable for the critical elaboration, lucidity, and acuteness with which the author has arranged the results of his extensive scheme of historic research. In this work he has noted and traced, from English records contemporary with the first settlement of Virginia, the beginnings of that great duel between conflicting civilizations which closed with the destruction of Spain's naval power at Manila and Santiago. And every scholar who seeks a precise comprehension of the origines of the late war should closely follow the course of investigation pursued by Dr. Brown. Every accessible detail of the desperate and protracted Anglo-Spanish conflict—including the exploits of Elizabeth's captains and the destruction of the Great Armada—come out under this historic searchlight as distinctly and vividly as material objects under the light of day. To citizens of Kentucky who have a critical and philosophic interest in the historic evolution of the Commonwealth, it will be peculiarly attractive in the circumstance that it connects, and in a special sense includes, the Genesis of Kentucky with that of the United States. He suggests in a most interesting way that this Commonwealth is not only a lineal product of the Elizabethan civilization which he has sought to trace, but that—cartographically at least—it formed an integral part of the first Republic established in the New World. In an explanatory communication addressed some years ago to the present writer, Dr. Brown says: "The bounds of the charters which contained the popular charter rights which were the germ of this republic extended between thirty-four degrees (34°) and forty degrees (40°) north latitude, and from ocean to ocean. Kentucky, therefore, was embraced within the first Republic in America."

The sagacious statesmen of Spain were not slow to detect the menacing significance of this Virginian settlement, small as it was; and the conflict then initiated did not cease until the navies of Spain went down under the guns of Dewey and Schley. The persistent machinations of Spanish intrigants to obtain control of Kentucky in the closing years of the Eighteenth Century were part of the same prolonged contest for supremacy upon American soil. Every resource of diplomacy, intrigue, and corruption—or, in modern phrase, of craft and graft—was exhausted by Spain to wrest the germinant Commonwealth from the parent stem. On the other hand, no scheme was more popular with the bold and enterprising Kentuckians—the Vikings of the West—than to wrest the control of the Mississippi River from the desperate grasp of Spain. Even the splendid and seducing allurement of a Spanish alliance was powerless against the transmitted instincts of a Scandinavian or Anglo-Norman stock. But the racial inclination for territorial expansion Kentucky never lost. There was a later manifestation of this spirit or instinct in the annexation of California; an appropriation by force, to be sure, but under recognized "legal forms"; and, still later, it was manifested in disastrous expeditions to the Cuban coast, in which the reckless survivors barely escaped, like the man of Uz, with the skin of their teeth—thanks to a swift steamship and to an indulgent interpretation of the violated law. In the near future, perhaps, we shall have an annexation of the Island under forms which will fully justify the act; annexation on the old lines. As far as race could make them so, the daring adventurers who poured to foreign war from the vast network of streams and streamlets that flowed seaward from the mountains and lowlands of Kentucky were Vikings, with all the fighting characteristics of that ancient breed.[6] Not Vi-Kings, nor "kings" of any sort, but simply the Vik-ings or "Creek-men" who followed their expatriated Jarls wherever a dragon-prow would float; to the land of the Saxon under his greatest king; to the heart of Ireland, where the natives were already "absorbing" the alien Norse; to the ancient Kingdom of Gaul; to Scotland and to the islands of the Atlantic Ridge; and above all to Iceland, the land of mist and snow and fire; to the incomparable mistress of the Northern seas. Through the beautiful Mediterranean, too, they sailed; and gathering to the support of the decadent despotisms of the East, became famous in history and romance as the Varangian Guard which held at bay the Saracen and the Hun. They were "rebels" when they fled from the consolidating despotism of Harold Fairhair. They have been rulers or rebels ever since.

But the story of their greatest exploits you read in the histories of the English race. We have analyzed the claims which Mr. Barrett Wendell has made for the Elizabethan settler upon the Atlantic Coast; and it is instructive to note that another gifted son of New England, Mr. John Fiske, has reached conclusions which he at least would acknowledge give confirmation to the present views, as strong as proof of Holy Writ. "The descendants of these Northmen," he says, "formed a very large proportion of the population of the East Anglian counties, and consequently of the men who founded New England. The East Anglian counties have been conspicuous for resistance to tyranny and for freedom of thought." By parity of reasoning, we may easily prove that the kindred Norman was the founder of civilization in England, and, in direct sequence and by filiation of race, of civilization in the Colony of Virginia; and, by a gradual evolution, in the States of the South and West.

Far back in the history of our race there stands, luminous and large, in his milieu of mediæval mist, a mounted conqueror with sword and torch—the immediate offspring of Scandinavian Jarls—the remote progenitor of the Virginian "Cavalier." It is the founder of that Anglo-Norman civilization of which we form a part, and which, in many ways, still responds to the impulse of that imperial brain.

William the Norman presented in vivid epitome the characteristic traits of his race, with other traits or variations of these traits that made him almost an abnormal figure even in the history of those times. He has been commonly depicted as physically a giant among his fellows; but Lord Lytton (a good authority) discredits these legends of gigantic stature; it is seldom we find, he declares, the association of great size and commanding intellect in great men; it is really a violation of the natural law, though possibly the great Norman may have been, like Abraham Lincoln, an exception to the general rule. His physical forces were certainly subjected to severe tests. His personal leadership in the wintry marches through the North of England were, practically, paralleled in later days by the wintry marches of our Scandinavian general, George Rogers Clark, in the vast territories of the North and West. The prodigious fortitude and endurance manifested in these campaigns proved beyond all question the staying capacity of the Scandinavian blood. The royal Norman had all the tastes of a forest-born man; not a mere taste for the sports of the field as known to the English gentlemen of a later period, but a wild, almost demoniac passion for the atrocities of the chase as practised by the early Norman kings. A love of royal sport does not discredit a modern ruler of men; but scarcely such sport as this. The "wild king," says an old English chronicler, "loves wild beasts as if he were a wild beast himself and the father of wild beasts." Churches and manors were swept away to create forests and dens and retreats for the creatures he loved to slay. He ruled, conquered, hunted, ravaged, "harried," and subjugated from Brittany to Scotland; and yet, says the same old chronicler in his "Flowers of History," "he was such a lover of peace that a girl laden with gold might traverse the whole of England without harm."

HONORABLE WILLIAM PRESTON.

This may or may not be a "flower of history"; but if true, it is a startling historic fact.

[XII]

As the Conqueror stood among the sovereigns of that day, so stood the Normans among the contemporary races. They were of peculiar type, these men—both sovereign and subject—and were cast in a like mold. They had body, sap, color, concentrated vigor, and inbred Thracian fire. They had a sort of racial distinction which in its merely personal aspects was never lost. Mingling with all races, they yet stood in a sense separate and apart from all. They were as the Haut Brion among the wines of the Bordelais. But, unlike their native vine, they bore transplantation to any land, and drew perpetual vigor from every soil. Strange as it may seem, there is a confessed incapacity for colonization in the Frenchman of to-day, and stranger still is the remedy for this defect which some of their leading thinkers have proposed, to wit, that the Frenchman should transmogrify himself into an Anglo-Saxon. Certainly a grotesque transformation, if effected in the manner proposed by those pessimistic prophets Demolins and Lemaître. France (they say) must have colonial expansion! The Anglo-Saxon is the only successful expansionist; we must Anglo-Saxonize France! They forget that the Anglo-Saxon himself is indebted for his success as a colonist and trader to the Scandinavian Frenchmen who colonized England under William the Conqueror, and that it was not until the Norman's demoniac spirit of "enterprise" took possession of the Anglo-Saxon thegns and ceorls that they even felt the impulse to "go down to the sea in ships." Later, too, they should remember, there was an industrial colonization of England by the Frenchmen who were relentlessly expatriated in the days of the dragonades. What France then lost has never been fully regained. When she lost the Norman element in its early Scandinavian form, her capacity for colonial expansion was seriously impaired. When she colonized England by an indiscriminate exclusion of the Huguenots from her own soil, her capacity for normal evolution was lost. The recanting or subjugated element that remained is probably represented by the prescriptive "free-thinking" anti-clerical element of to-day. The profane spirit of the English "Bigod" had been imported into the religion of France, and "bigotry" may discredit the claims of the noblest faith. The extreme reactionary result in this instance is an intolerant unbelief, passing at times into a ferocious contempt for country, constitutions, and creeds.

The storms of Norman conquest seemed scarce to touch the depths of Anglo-Saxon life. No marked change in the methods of local administration accompanied the change of kings. The rude strength of the old manorial system was proof against radical change. Far less complex than the centralized administration of modern France, it was even better calculated to accommodate itself to the changes wrought by the hand of war. Built low and strong, it stood four-square to every shock and blast. It was only the high towers that toppled in the sweep of the storm. When it passed, the village-group, the manorial life, and the rude strong sons of the soil were still there. Andrews, an authority upon early Anglo-Saxon life, gives us a picture of the "yeoman" which leaves much to be desired in the way of picturesqueness and charm. Upon the testimony of priests and leeches he is depicted as a swinish, servile sort of creature—gross, stupid, sensual, superstitious, cruel, and even "beastly"; with no conception whatever of "freedom," and only the most bestial conceptions of life. The routine of husbandry after the Conquest knew no change. A Norman baron unseats the Saxon thegn, but the villein and ceorl take up the labors of the old manorial life; the new lord receives the customary dues, and protection against lawlessness is extended to bond and free. This servile Saxon class were the descendants of a soldier race which many years before the advent of the conquering Norman had rudely dispossessed the ancient inhabitants of the soil, and were themselves first to "harry," no doubt (for harry is an old Saxon word imported from the North), the whole of that turbulent realm which William harried only in part. But the Norman harried well. It may be said that Northumbria never rallied from the devastation until the magical agencies of modern industrialism came to repair the ravage that he had wrought. But elsewhere the "Conquest" worked no such change. The Norman simply gave completeness, variety, elevation, splendor, and finish to the Saxon's rude but solid work. The transformation wrought through the genius of the soldier-statesman was not the plodding reconstruction of a shattered kingdom upon ancient lines, but the orderly evolution of a new and splendid civilization within conditions "visualized" by the Conqueror's creative brain. The primordial and paramount condition of this work was the permanent establishment of English unity at the gathering of the people upon Salisbury Plain. When the people rallied in loyal allegiance to the throne, the old conceptions of "feudalism" ceased to exist—vanishing centuries before Cervantes smiled Spain's "chivalry" away. In our own Websterian phrase, England was henceforth "one and indivisible." The fusion of warring elements was now as complete as if welded together by the hammer of Thor. The consequences of that initial step are told in the history of the English race—consequences which this imperial statesman alone had the genius to forecast. To no mere man does the line of the Nineteenth Century poet so well apply—

"He dipt into the future far as human eye could see."

This Norman adventurer who had now practically established all his pretensions—legitimate and illegitimate—was destined to establish, also, a line of Anglo-Norman princes who showed in varied ways that transmitted blood would tell. Shakespeare, in his splendid series of historical plays, has painted in vivid colors and fine dramatic sequence the manifestation of this Anglo-Norman influence through a succession of closely connected reigns—weaving into brilliant and picturesque history the fireside traditions which fascinated his youthful mind. The story that he tells is unique, not only in the literature of the race, but in the literature of man. "The only history that I know," said an English statesman discussing the annals of his race, "is the history that Shakespeare wrote." No formal historic writer has presented so faithfully or effectively the characteristic traits and temper of that time. It is a philosophic study, resting chiefly upon a traditional basis, and cast in a powerful dramatic form. And who so fit as Shakespeare to depict the features of a royal race? This strong portrayal of their salient or their subtler qualities, in statecraft or in war, is something quite beyond the reach of a mere historian's art. Through all this dramatic movement we note the wild tricks of an hereditary blood; the troublous or turbulent play of passions flowing from an alien source. It is in this record alone we find that magical touch, that moving speech, that strange, pathetic eloquence which flows from royal lips inspired to utterance by the sorrows of an Anglo-Norman brain. Doubtless it is Shakespeare's noblest work. It is certainly a product of the same imperial spirit that breathes in the aspirations, the utterances, and the acts of the "melancholy Dane."

Recent researches among the Scandinavian population of the Northern States seem to show marked psychological distinctions in the several branches of the Scandinavian stock, denoting original differences in the mental make-up and manifestations of the Norwegian, the Swede, and the Dane; brainy races all, but the psychological manifestations of their daily life differing in each. The Swede and his Norwegian brother have a strong, instinctive inclination for the ruder activities of their social environment—building, boating, agriculture, railway construction, commercial operations, etc.; the Dane, on the contrary, manifesting an equally marked predilection for life in its contemplative or æsthetic aspects—for philosophy, the belleslettres, the fine arts, and the higher lines of scholastic research. His physiognomy is differentiated, so to speak, by "the pale cast of thought." Is it not possible that this deep intra-racial distinction was recognized by the creator of the "melancholy Dane"?

But "Hamlet" was not altogether a product of Shakesperean imagination. The original lines of the character seem to have been found in the personality of a contemporary thinker, himself, like Hamlet, an obstinate questioner of invisible things. In those eager Elizabethan times when Drake and Raleigh were "discovering" other worlds and Shakespeare imagining new, there lived near the ancient city of Bordeaux a modest country gentleman—a grand seigneur of peculiar distinction—who on his father's side was of direct English descent. He bore a patrician title; he was lord of a rich domain, and enjoyed social and civic distinctions of the highest sort. His scholarship was ample and unique; his social pretensions were not in excess of his rank; and he bore his weight of learning "lightly like a flower." Rank, riches, scholarship, distinction—all these he had, and more; he had the prodigious gift of common sense, with a sort of cynical humor flashing through an habitual mood of philosophic thought that gave to his writing—and notably to his book of observations and reflections—a peculiar archaic charm. One could not pay a higher tribute to his literary power than to add, that his writings had a powerful fascination for Shakespeare himself. These philosophic essays supplied the great dramatist with many subtle and striking thoughts, and the very personality of the modest country gentleman made a profound impression upon Shakespeare's mind; so marked an impression indeed that according to the affirmation or suggestion of an ingenious modern scholar, the great English writer—himself of Anglo-Norman blood—found in this Anglo-French philosopher the original of that incomparable dramatic figure—the "melancholy Dane." If this theory be correct, it simply adds to the evidence of a certain bizarre weirdness in the working of that old Scandinavian blood. Be this as it may, if the mind of Shakespeare could be touched and inspired by the philosophic reflexions of a provincial thinker in France (a Frenchman with a strong suspicion of Anglo-Norman blood), there are doubtless others (some with the same ethnic affinities) that may profitably be reached in the same way; and lest the Anglo-Normans of our Bluegrass "Arcady" should take themselves too seriously, as even the wisest may do, in the momentous matter of "family," "rank," "blood," and "race," it would be well at parting to introduce for their consideration the antiquated opinions of the same ingenious Frenchman, who, wise as he was, did not always perhaps take matters seriously enough. In this instance no doubt his views will carry weight.

GENERAL BASIL W. DUKE.

Thus much by way of preface and apology (if there be need of either) in closing an excursive dissertation upon the ethnological theories of Monsieur Paul Du Chaillu, accompanied with some interesting reflections from the pen of another Frenchman who, though not "modern" in the same sense, seems to have been in some of his conceptions quite judicious and even elevated in his views. This quaint, genial, and sagacious philosopher—the author of a famous book of "Essays"—was the Seigneur de la Montaigne, Count of Perigord and sometime Mayor of Bordeaux, whose greatest title to fame is this—that he was the favorite author of William Shakespeare, the foremost writer of all time. Possibly Montaigne by contribution of thought was an unconscious collaborator in the construction of "Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark," a drama which illustrates in brilliant, powerful, and fantastic fashion the varied intellectual and emotive capacities of the Scandinavian blood. In that royal Anglo-Norman, "Prince Hal" of England, the English dramatist depicts the man of action; in Hamlet, the brooding Prince of Denmark, he presents the man of thought. They were the favorite children of Shakespeare's prolific brain.

"'Tis a scurvy custom and of very ill-consequence," says the ingenious Chevalier Montaigne, "that we have in our kingdom of France to call every one by the name of his manor or seigneury, and the thing in the world that does the most prejudice and confounds families and descents.... We need look no further for example than our own royal family, where every partage creates a new sir-name, whilst in the meantime the original of the family is totally lost. There is so great liberty taken in these mutations that I have not in my time seen any one advanced by fortune to any extraordinary condition who has not presently had genealogical titles added to him new and unknown to his father.

"How many gentlemen have we in France who by their own talk are of royal extraction? More I think than who will confess they are not.

"Was it not a pleasant passage of a friend of mine? There were a great many gentlemen assembled together; about the dispute of one lord of the manor with another, which other had in truth some pretty eminence of titles and alliances, above the ordinary scheme of gentry. Upon the debate of this priority of place, every one standing up for himself, to make himself equal to him; one, one extraction, another another; one the near resemblance of name; another of arms; another an old worm-eaten patent, and the least of them great-grandchild to some foreign king. When they came to sit down to dinner, my friend, instead of taking his place amongst them, retiring with most profound congees, entreated the company to excuse him for having lived with them hitherto at the saucy rate of a companion; but being now better informed of their quality, he would begin to pay them the respect due to their birth and grandeur; and that it would ill become him to sit down among so many princes; and ended the farce with a thousand reproaches.

"Let us in God's name," continues the illustrious writer, "satisfy ourselves with what our fathers were contented and with what we are; we are great enough if we understand rightly how to maintain it; let us not disown the fortune and condition of our ancestors, and lay aside those ridiculous pretences that can never be wanting to any one that has the impudence to alledge them."

[XIII]

The alphabetical series of Norman or Anglo-Norman names here given was selected by an English scholar from an English official directory and published, anonymously, in the latter half of the last century, to illustrate a theory of the genesis of the English race. The present selection represents only in part the series or lists originally published, embracing several thousand names. To this selection the writer has added Norman or Scandinavian names from other sources, together with "notes" that serve to confirm in detail the general theory of inherited racial traits. The list which he first published has been greatly enlarged and many additions made from the original English series.[7]

Mr. Freeman says that the Normans "lost themselves" among the people whom they conquered. Very clearly, however, the "names" were not lost. The original Norman may be said to have had, in a high degree, that personnalité absorbante which, according to Littré, is characteristic of every great man. It is not remarkable, therefore, that after every Norman invasion the resulting ethnical transmutation was complete. The new element became at once the vitalizing power of the "absorptive" or subjugated race. This gift of racial transformation was so great that the Scandinavians, seizing a Gallic province, became French or Norman; subjugating England, they became English; overflowing Ireland, they fused at once with the native race; actually becoming "Irisher than the Irish" themselves—Hibernis ipsis Hiberniores. The Duke of Argyle once said in the English House of Lords that three of the Irish leaders of that day (one of them John Redmond, the present Irish King) were genealogically superior men—men of illustrious descent—leaders of royal or noble Norman blood; confirming the declaration made by the author of the "Peerage" that it is not lands but ancestors that make a nobility. The career of the Norman as a conquering or migratory race has been a perpetual masquerade; in England taking the form of an Irishman and controlling the Parliament; in the same guise leading the armies of England and France; in America, demoniacally possessed, becoming the personal director of a lynching, the boss of a strike, or the leader of a lawless expeditionary force. But everywhere he leads! The name of the race disappears, but the original, indestructible, irresistible, invisible and protean force is still there. If we reject the existence and operation of this subtle and pervasive influence in the ancestral strains of Kentucky, the evolution of the typical Kentuckian can not easily be explained. The race is "lost," not because the visiting Norman is absorbed by his host, but because the visitor appropriates all that his host may have, even his personality and all that it implies. The Englishman, or the Irishman, or the Scotchman, disappear, and a transmogrified Norman takes his place. It is not English, nor Irish, nor French absorptiveness, but Norman appropriativeness, that has done the work. Precisely thus, to compare great things with small: the English Whigs once went in swimming, and the Norman Tories "stole their clothes." But the Norman's act of appropriation usually goes deeper than the skin. He is not content with a petty theft of "clothes." With an almost satanic subtlety and finesse he appropriates the very soul. It becomes, indeed, his very own. That incomparable illusionist, Benjamin Disraeli, was a past-master in these Norman arts, and in perfect sympathy with those Anglo-Norman Tories who followed his fortunes in victory or defeat. But Norman or Saxon were equally indifferent to him. It was glory enough for Semitic ambition to build success upon the needs of both; and yet, in doing it, this man of alien blood and ancient race repeated the miracle of Lanfranc—the scholar and statesman who, in the old Norman days, had not only cooled the hot blood of the Normanized Scandinavian and conciliated the respect of the proud, implacable Saxon, but, linking their interests in inseparable association, had brightened with a prospect of imperial splendor the destinies of the common race. So, too, the Semitic statesman charmed the rudest elements with his Orphean song. His brilliant successor, Salisbury, added to parts and learning the technical information of a savant. Disraeli had something better. He had that deep, philosophic insight which seems to be bred into the elect of an ancient stock. It is a mystical gift.

"He saw things, now, as though they were,

And things To Be in things that are."

This (if we may believe Haeckel) was the "inspiration" of the Jewish Law-giver.

THE MARSHALL HOME AT "BUCK POND."
(Near Versailles, Kentucky.)
Built in 1783 by Colonel Thomas Marshall, father of Chief Justice Marshall.

How little escaped the thoughtful eyes of our Semitic statesman, as he surveyed from his coign of vantage the shifting currents of our modern world! In depicting Monsignore Berwick, a descendant of an old Scottish family that for generations had mingled Italian blood with its own, the writer looks quite beyond the native environment, and sees only the old Northern blood in the flaxen hair and light blue eyes of the young Italian priest. Describing a nineteenth century function at the beautiful English home of Hugo Bohun, he sees at once in Mr. Gaston Phoebus—the most gifted and attractive of the swells whom fashion has herded in this social jungle of Bohun—not a modern Englishman, but a Gascon noble of the Sixteenth Century, clothed with all the attractions of a contemporary courtier of France—the France of Louis le Grand. In "Gaston Phoebus"—says the philosophic statesman—"Nature, as is sometimes her wont, had chosen to reproduce exactly the original type." When the subtle Semitic thinker introduced an American "Colonel" at the swell function of Hugo Bohun, why should he take him from the South, and give him a Norman name? Had nature reproduced in Colonel Campian the antique Norman type?

It is a notorious fact, says Herbert Spencer, that the Celtic type disappears altogether in the United States.

Doubtless some vague conception of a potential undercurrent of ancestral blood must have been passing through the mind of that fine old gentleman, Mr. Isaac Shelby of Fayette, when dispensing his stores of bachelor wisdom to his young friends just "after the war." He would say, "Depend on it, young gentlemen, there is no cross like a Virginian cross." The differentiating quality was there. It was observed, but not accurately depicted perhaps, by Disraeli, by Barrett Wendell, and by Isaac le Bon. What was it? If a racial quality, what race? Two of these acute observers were of Scandinavian stock. The other did not need to say, even to the proudest statesman at Potsdam or St. James, "Your race is of but yesterday compared with my own." One of Disraeli's favorite themes was race. Indeed, a statesman could not be ignorant of the subject in his day. The claims of race were sweeping over diplomatic arrangements and dynastic rights. Bismarck was unifying the German people by removing ancient landmarks, by "appropriating" autonomous territories, and by appropriating or absorbing a large population of the Scandinavian race; and the third (and last) Napoleon undertook to unify the Latin races by placing an Austrian prince upon the Mexican throne. But the Napoleonic prince pushed his reconstructive theories of race to a destructive conclusion when, in freeing Italy, he furnished a formidable partner to the Triple Alliance, that ultimately destroyed France. The sentiment of race, properly directed, has its uses. But the director must not be a despot or a despot's agent. The feeling must be popular in origin and expression—voluntary, spontaneous, normal, autonomous. There was never a better illustration of its power than in the prolonged struggle of Kentucky for existence as an American State. There was never a better illustration of popular capacity in statecraft and of enterprise in war than in the early years of the last century (1800-12). They—the people—discharged the functions of an independent State. Kentucky was in fact a little nation. Raising and equipping armies, receiving diplomatic emissaries or agents, defending her frontiers, guarding the Atlantic border, protecting the territories of the Northwest, and in conjunction with the "sea-power" of Commodore Perry actually conducting war upon foreign soil. The very guns on Perry's ships were "sighted" by riflemen from Kentucky; and when the day came to try conclusions with the bold Englishman on his own soil, one of the most efficient aides upon Shelby's staff was Perry himself. Is there nothing in this record to appeal to a sentiment of national pride in the Kentuckian's heart? And does it not inspire a disposition to revive and invigorate those pristine instincts of our common race? Probably the recent manifestation of "home-coming" sentiment was denotive of some such stirring of racial impulse and emotion long dormant in the soul.

[XIV]

When following the long dim path of Gothic migration we found but little that seemed to be in vivid relation with the ethnology of our own race; and it was not until we were afloat upon the Scandinavian seas, with Rolf Ganger looking out upon the kingdoms of the earth, that we began to feel ourselves (to speak in paradox) firmly planted upon historic ground. Here the conditions of the old parable are reversed. The genius of civilization is offering the kingdoms of the earth to the Devil himself. With the old pirate of the Norwegian coast begins the great movement that frees, elevates, and modernizes man.[8] Henceforth all is plain sailing for the historical inquirer. The reader may take down his map and trace the foot-prints of the Norse freebooters wherever they dropped a Scandinavian name upon our ancestral soil. These ancient "place names" are found everywhere north of the Avon, and may easily be traced along the eastern coast of England, from the Tyne to the Thames; or, proceeding westward and northward, far beyond the line of the Cheviot Hills;—far beyond the waters of the Tweed. The Scandinavian has resolved to stay wherever he has been planted by the fortunes of war. When his Norman kinsman seized the counties of Southern England, the practical result of the invasion was to reinforce the Anglo-Saxon whom he came to rob. The Norman invader was warmly received by those English Normans—the Danes—in his "wintry marches" to the north. From the dragon teeth thus sown sprang the Kentuckian of to-day, two thirds "dragon" and one third "bull." The "half horse, half alligator" was an Anglo-Norman assimilation of a later date.

It is conceivable that by reason of exhausted material resources—coal, iron, etc.—our present splendid civilization, in the course of a few thousand years, will disappear; leaving here and there, perhaps, in some happy isle of the Pacific seas, a prosperous and cultivated population descended from some surviving element of the present American stock. Peering painfully through the mists of tradition, they have vague glimpses of ancestral races fighting for supremacy in a vast continental war—the Yenghees in the North and the Dixees in the South—remote ancestral races in internecine conflict.

It was thus with the Teutonic and Scandinavian races of to-day. In far-off Central Asia, beyond the Caspian Sea and beyond the definite historic boundaries of the past, they see great races in perpetual movement of migration or war; multitudinous peoples; two distinct groups or divisions; but all of one race. As they emerge into the twilight of history—into the savage gloaming betwixt the dog and the wolf—the observer recognizes two races, the Teutones and the Gothones, or Goths. The vast migratory columns of the former take possession of Central Europe. The other column,—the kindred Gothones or Goths,—making its exit from Central Asia, sweeps along the valley of the Vistula, follows the southern shores of the Baltic Sea, and moving to the mouths of the Elbe and the Rhine directs its columns of colonization into Denmark and the Danish Islands, and to the vast Scandinavian peninsula of the north. As the northern column loitered along the shores of the Baltic they gathered great quantities of amber from the sea, which with early instincts of commercial thrift they sold to the Teutones on the south, by whom, with early mechanic aptitude, it was wrought into many exquisite and profitable shapes for the markets of the world. "Made in Germany" is an antique trademark in the history of men, and there is a pleasant, if trivial, significance in the circumstance that the first historic article of traffic between these primitive races—the founders of modern civilization—was the substance which first manifested the property of "electricity" to the eyes of man.

But in pursuing this inquiry we are less concerned in ascertaining the exact relations of the ancestral kinsmen than in studying the ethnic material (in this instance the Scandinavian) which was molded or modified by the geographical milieu. What was the moral geography of the race? Why should the Norseman differ from his kindred Teuton in the South? There may have been original differences in the psychology of race which made one, for example, an explorer and trader, and the other an unrivaled artisan and exploiter. But there is something to be considered in the plastic influence of the physical and social conditions. It is no melodramatic assumption, for example, to declare that no slave could live in the free air of Scandinavia. Not because the air is "free," but because the soil is thin. The slave could not subsist himself, much less pay tribute to a lord. If slavery or serfage was impossible, a nobility was equally so. Where subsistence was scant, accumulation was at least slow. Wealth could not exist as a basis of privilege, and class legislation upon primogeniture gave support to this natural law. The "five" and "fifty" acre holdings could not be consolidated into big estates. The rocky ridges, the high levels, the nipping airs, the thin, worn soil, the short seasons, and the fleeting harvests were conditions fatal to the growth of feudalism. Retainers were superfluous where slaves could not make their keep. Fish from the sea, a little pasturage in the glens—that was all. No smiling abundant harvests; no patient laborious thralls, no baronial bas or boss; none of those iron Teutonic laws that not only shaped the conditions of society but wrought changes in the very soul of man. The Scandinavians were not Germans or Saxons or Angles or Celts. This rocky Scandinavian peninsula was cradling the masters of the world. They were literally driven by their wild, arid nurse to follow the furrows of the sea and recast the corrupted civilizations of the earth. Between the sheltering group of islands that fringe the western front of Norway and curtain the main shore, there is a broad passage of the sea where a navy of dragon-prows might float secure from observation or attack. Near the center of this insular barrier, Rolf Ganger—the greatest force of that hyperborean world—had constructed a system of dry-docks, from which, in the idle hours of summer and autumn, he launched those portentous fleets of dragons and serpents that sailed upon every sea and ravaged the most distant shores. From one point of view, it was a nest of Scandinavian free-booters; from another, it was the naval station of a great sea-faring race—a race that, having failed as traders in amber and timber and fish, were now about to try their luck in ravage and loot upon the gravelly loams of the Cheviot Hills and deep in the sunny heart of France.

COLONEL RICHARD M. JOHNSON.

William the Conqueror was fifth in descent from this great Captain of the northern seas—the potential reconstructor of the modern world.

[XV]

When the great Gothic column of migration, sweeping past the Caspian and crossing the Asian frontier, followed the river valleys and the shores of the Baltic Sea, making a reconnoissance in force that reached as far as the waters of the northern sea, it pushed its exploring columns through every part of Scandinavia, peopling every shore it passed, and leaving every promontory and peninsula in every nook and hook and cranny and on every continental headland, every island inlet, and in every peaceful arm of the Danish seas strewn with the wrecks of the migrant column, battered by the hardships of a long, unbroken march. Only the strong survived. The weak and unenterprising, as the head of the resistless column bent toward the northern sea, shrank from the toils and terrors of a march in a northern clime. Upon these geographical points of "refuge" the racial weaklings had been gathering for years. Nothing stayed the mighty Goth. The Norman could turn the sharpest corners in the Danish world. Once planted in the footsteps of a pioneer, even a phlegmatic Teuton might pursue his way. But the exhausted weakling dropped in his tracks, and crawled to the shelter of some inviting angulus or nook. Here they were—the drift in the eddy of an archipelagic sea. Jutes from Jutland (in Denmark); Saxons from the shores to the south; Angles, from the Anglen in Sleswick—in all a seething colluvian of ethnic stragglers swarming for an ultimate raid upon British soil. The great Teutonic nation was seemingly planted on the best lands of Central Europe; the great Scandinavian people lay far to the north; the Jutes, the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, lay between;—the Angli, who gave their name to England, lying at the point (Angulus) where the coast of the Baltic first bends sharply toward the north. Are these the peoples that gave substance and strength and splendor to the English race? The men who fall out in a forced march (said a great Virginian captain) are not the men to stand up in a long fight.

Toward the close of the Eighth Century the Scandinavians of the North began their work of devastation upon English soil. For at least three centuries the Anglo-Saxons held the Rover's name in dread. Contemporary English abounds with Scandinavian words and forms; numerous traces of Scandinavian occupancy are found on English soil to-day. The men of the Heptarchy were in the main bred upon English soil. At least they were not a broken race of stragglers when they came. They were a vigorous, fighting breed. But if Bismarck were looking for "mixed races" in his carefully calculated career of annexation (no "dreaming" here), he certainly found what he sought at the point where the column of Goths that had marched from Central Asia, turning its head to the German Ocean, took courage from the bracing prospect and—gathering their veterans into one compact, invulnerable mass—debouched boldly toward the vast, inhospitable regions of the North. The Angles and Saxons were cradled among the mixed or mongrel peoples that had been dropped by the great migrant races in the southeastern corner of the northern sea—a population, says Marsh, of "very mixed and diversified blood." These furnished the original "comelings" upon British soil, but it is scarcely credible that the outcome of this mongrel stock was the Anglo-Saxon Race,—which in the great Triple Alliance of Norman and Saxon and Dane has for centuries maintained an unbroken front and kept the world in awe.

[XVI]

The learned author of "British Family Names," speaking of certain lists of ancient Norman names alleged to be authentic, says: "Of this great array of time-honored names, few are now borne by direct representatives. They exist among the old gentry rather than in the peerage. In the majority of cases, the later descendants of illustrious families have sunk into poverty and obscurity, unconscious of their origin." They have not "vanished from the world" (as Mr. Freeman says), but are daily coming to the front in circumstances requiring capacity for leadership in affairs. "Even now," says the observant author of an anonymous treatise,[9] "agricultural laborers and coal miners can not combine for objects which demand the exercise of practical ability without finding themselves led by those who, though in humble stations, bear names of undoubted Norman origin," citing, by way of example, Joseph Arch (De Arques, Normandy). These quotations will fitly introduce to the reader the long and suggestive alphabetical series of Norman names which the compiler has made the basis of extended critical remark.

In examining this series, one naturally inquires: How do we know that the thousands of names, taken from an old English Directory, are Norman? Simply by the circumstance that the same names occur in the records of Normandy in the Eleventh and Twelfth centuries—the references in most cases being to the great Rolls of the Exchequer, 1180-1200. Comparative reference to the English records at an early date—Eleventh, Twelfth, and Thirteenth centuries—raises a strong presumption that names appearing on the Norman Rolls before the Conquest, and on English records after the Conquest, were derived from Normandy, and that names now accounted English were originally Norman names. A similar correspondence between the names in the records of a Virginian court house and those of official records in Kentucky, to the mind of a contemporary genealogist, would carry decisive weight. It is the weight of concurrent testimony of high character from authentic sources. Identitas colligitur ex multitudine signorum. Even one surname in like circumstances is a significant record of individual descent. What shall be said of thousands historically traced—the continuous record of a single race? Thirty years ago it was estimated by an English scholar that the English race proper comprised thirty millions of people—a great composite nation; the Saxon, Dane, and Norman—a trinity of races all derived from the same ancient stock (the Gothic) and each forming about one third of a homogeneous race. The Saxon came immediately from the southeastern shores and islands of the North Sea, and is of Gothic descent; the Dane from Denmark or the Danish Isles, and is of pure Scandinavian stock; the Norman from Normandy, remotely Gothic, is of direct descent from the Scandinavian race. If this statement be correct the conclusion seems to be inevitable, not that "we are Scandinavians"—as the London Times says—but that we are all deeply Scandinavianized and that there is a preponderance of Scandinavian blood in the English race. If there has been a thorough intermixture of the three racial elements during the past eight hundred years, we may assume that every Kentuckian of Anglo-Virginian stock represents a practically definite ethnical product: Saxon, one third; Scandinavian, two thirds—for all controversial purposes a sufficiently conclusive result. The long-commingled blood of this composite race is, in effect, an adamantine cement, and the racial plexus, fusion, or combination is one and inseparable in every sense. If it were possible to remove either of these constituent elements—the Scandinavian or Saxon—the Kentuckian in his present admirable form would disappear and nothing but a restoration of the racial balance by a reconstitution of the original parts would restore him to the position of primacy assigned him by Mr. Bart Kennedy in his recent contribution to the London Mail. How true, then, in a deep ethnological sense, the familiar legend of our Commonwealth—"United we stand, divided we fall."

Be this as it may, it is desirable to have it understood that so long as the Saxon holds his own (and no more) in the constitution of our common race, there can arise no possible "unpleasantness" between the parts of which it is composed. In that duplex anthropoidal abnormity to which its creator has given a significant binominal appellation—Jekyll and Hyde—some regulative element seems to be lacking. Is it an element of race? The author does not say as much in express terms, but apparently he suggests it in his selection of names. Have we not a Norman in Mr. Jekyll? And a Saxon in Mr. Hyde? That we have not a normal Englishman is quite clear. Is the dominant Scandinavian element short? or has some demoniac "Berserker" blood slipped into the cross?

Subtle and descriminative writers (such as Stevenson and Disraeli) do not express themselves after a careless fashion, as a rule. They mean something, even in the selection of a name.

COLONEL J. STODDARD JOHNSTON.

There is something, too, no doubt, that appeals to the popular imagination merely in a Norman name, and Lord Lytton has cleverly exploited this predilection in many fascinating volumes of historical romance; tales of love and chivalry that in our soft mid-century days had rivaled, and for a time eclipsed, the magical creations of Scott. The later school of Scandinavian writers has not won the Kentuckian from his early love of English and Scottish romance. His conception of the actual Scandinavian—the Scandinavian in the flesh—the Scandinavian of to-day, is still undefined and vague. Until Du Chaillu came he had given the matter but little thought. And, yet, fifty years before—in the busy, brooding twenties—another Frenchman, wandering among the Scandinavians of Gothia, describes their predominant characteristics thus: "Fair hair, blue eyes, a middle stature, light and slim; a physiognomy indicating frankness, gentleness, and a certain sentimental elevation of mind, especially among the fair sex. The people in the other provinces partake of these different physical and moral qualities."

How completely this description by a Frenchman in Scandinavia verifies the casual observation of another Frenchman in Kentucky! Their hospitality, M. Du Chaillu informed us in his charming lecture, was almost without bounds, and at times to a Kentuckian would have been embarrassing in the extreme, as when those snowy-handed hostesses bathed the traveler's feet and tucked him away in bed. But Monsieur seems to have suffered no embarrassment on this account.

Among the population of the Northern provinces of Scandinavia there are men of almost gigantic stature, with dark hair, deep-set eyes, a look somewhat fierce, but full of expression and vivacity. Their muscles are large, firm, and distinct, the bones prominent, the features regular and clear cut. A cheerful temper and "an enterprising disposition" are qualities common to the whole population. A stranger is welcome in all circles. Even in the polar circles the hospitality loses none of its warmth. Probably it is in dispensing their hospitality that their passion for "strong liquor" is most marked. This liquor they drink out of horns; and that is why, said Du Chaillu, convincingly, that we say in Kentucky, "Will you take a horn?" But the Kentuckian seems to derive this peculiarity from every side. "Fill the largest horns," said the Saxon, Cedric, when his slaves were arranging the banquet for his Norman guests.

[XVII]

The impression we derive from the foregoing description of the Scandinavian physique among the more northern tribes recalls Professor Shaler's conclusions from a careful study of the measurement of fifty thousand troops from Kentucky, made by the astronomer Gould (a distinguished mathematician), who after the war took service in the Argentine Republic. "The results," he says, "are surprising. Their average height was nearly an inch greater than that of the New England troops; they exceed them equally in girth of chest, and the circumference of head is also very much larger. In size they come up to the level of the picked regiments of the Northern armies of Europe."[10] Yet these results were obtained from what was a levy en masse. It did not include "the rebel exiles" who were the "first running from the press," or, as is often said, "the flower of the State," and being in the main of a more exuberant habit of body would doubtless have given still better results. It is questionable if all Scandinavia could furnish two such heads as William Nelson's and Humphrey Marshall's. Ceteris paribus, said Leidy, "size is a measure of power"—referring to size of head. When General Marshall was warned that his great size would attract the attention of sharpshooters, he answered, "I have provided for that. I have a fat staff. There be six Richmonds in the field!" His aide and secretary was a Norman of wholly different type; of a slight figure, but of an activity, courage, vivacity, and endurance wholly unsurpassed. Captain Shaler (himself a capable soldier, with a strong dash of New England blood) singles out for special commendation the soldiers and officers of Morgan's command. He especially notes their high social quality, their physical vigor and activity, their endurance under severe tests, and their peculiar aptitude and penchant for the business of war. He waxes vigorously poetic in describing the martial qualities of the "Orphan Brigade."

Hereditary surnames are said to be memorials of race that can never be obliterated. If thousands of men, swept along in some great historic migratory movement which is followed and described by critical observers through country after country, through century after century, never "breaking ranks" except to plant and build, leaving the same names upon the official records of every dukedom, or kingdom, or commonwealth through which they pass; when their names, their features, their instincts, their mental habits, their daily speech, their terms of law, the language and routine of their courts, are impressed with the same ethnic stamp; when the same mental, physical, and moral characteristics are manifest generation after generation; when myriads of minute resemblances confirm the conclusions of the larger view, why lose one's self in the haunting mystery of apparent discrepancies in detail? Let us give full credit to each member of the triune ethnical Trust—which is charged with all the responsibilities of this magnificent modern world. If you wish to know how much can be said to thrill with delight that old Saxon element of your blood, read what the Count de Montalembert (another Frenchman) has said in his "Monks of the West." The enormous difficulties encountered by the Church in that old chaotic day approximately measure the shortcomings of the race. That the crude, repulsive Saxon should have been fashioned into the noble figure which Montalembert describes, speaks well for the essential worth of the Saxon; but what a tribute to the miraculous power of the Monk!

In the original prolusion and in the present preface the writer has simply tried to prepare the way for investigators of greater gifts. Here the Philologist is in his proper field. In pursuing this work, he becomes the genealogist of a race. Names of localities, names of men, are subject—like all other words—to every variety of phonetic change, and, it may be said, are in a perpetual state of flux. But there is a soul that survives all changes. It is for the scholar to catch it on the wing and fix a fleeting syllable for all time.

[XVIII]

The student who is interested in this subject may find some help in the following series of Names (to which frequent reference has been made), compiled by an anonymous English scholar whose learning and ability have been recognized in the critical reviews. It was to one of these reviews that the present writer was indebted for suggestions that at once quickened his interest in M. Du Chaillu and his researches, and induced him in the republication of the English writer's list (taken from a London Directory) to add to the selections a few names of obvious Scandinavian derivation—Danish, Swedish, and Old Norse. Any fixed rule of selection, in a discussion like this, it is difficult to apply. Readers who comprehend how easily errors creep into an ordinary record of "family" pedigrees will make due allowance for errors that may be found in this modestly illustrative Anglo-Norman list, in which there is but little attempt to trace lineal family descent. With a body of names so pregnant with significance as this, the credentials of any branch of the Anglo-Norman race in any part of the earth will be recognized as good. The difficulties of the problem are apparent to all. Its interest and importance it is impossible to exaggerate or deny. If more simply stated, probably it were more easily understood, but, failing in simplicity of statement, very frequent repetitions may be excused.

The origin of the general discussion ought to encourage every scholar. According to the pleasing conception of the great Scottish romancer, the originator of this controversy was a Saxon slave who understood the art of deducing philosophic conclusions from unconsidered trifles. While herding his master's swine in the West Riding of Yorkshire, he spoke to a fellow thrall who stalked about in the full enjoyment of Saxon freedom with a brazen collar about his neck:

"And swine is good English," said the jester. "But how call you the sow when she is flayed, drawn and quartered, and hung up by the heels like a traitor?"

"Pork," said Gurth.

"And pork, I think, is good Norman French. When alive and in charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by a Saxon name. She is a Norman when dressed for the table in the castle hall. What dost thou think of that, friend Gurth?"

"It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool's pate."