sea-rovers who won England to a great extent actually displaced the
native Britons. The former were absorbed by the subject-races; the
latter, on the contrary, slew or drove off or assimilated the original
inhabitants. Unlike all the other Germanic swarms, the English took
neither creed nor custom, neither law nor speech, from their beaten
foes. At the time when the dynasty of the Capets had become firmly
established at Paris, France was merely part of a country where
Latinized Gauls and Basques were ruled by Latinized Franks, Goths,
Burgunds, and Normans; but the people across the Channel then showed
little trace of Celtic or Romance influence. It would be hard to say
whether Vercingetorix or Caesar, Clovis or Syagrius, has the better
right to stand as the prototype of a modern French general. There is
no such doubt in the other case. The average Englishman, American, or
Australian of to-day who wishes to recall the feats of power with
which his race should be credited in the shadowy dawn of its history,
may go back to the half-mythical glories of Hengist and Horsa, perhaps
to the deeds of Civilis the Batavian, or to those of the hero of the
Teutoburger fight, but certainly to the wars neither of the Silurian
chief Caractacus nor of his conqueror, the after-time Emperor
Vespasian.

Nevertheless, when, in the sixteenth century, the European peoples
began to extend their dominions beyond Europe, England had grown to
differ profoundly from the Germanic countries of the mainland. A very
large Celtic element had been introduced into the English blood, and,
in addition, there had been a considerable Scandinavian admixture.
More important still were the radical changes brought by the Norman
conquest; chief among them the transformation of the old English
tongue into the magnificent language which is now the common
inheritance of so many widespread peoples. England's insular position,