literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many
glories of England.

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was
all but complete; and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to
be mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world
had been formed by the mixture of three branches of the great
Teutonic family with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons.
There was, indeed, scarcely anything in common between the
England to which John had been chased by Philip Augustus, and the
England from which the armies of Edward the Third went forth to
conquer France.

A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the
chief object of the English was to establish, by force of arms, a
great empire on the Continent. The claim of Edward to the
inheritance occupied by the House of Valois was a claim in which
it might seem that his subjects were little interested. But the
passion for conquest spread fast from the prince to the people.
The war differed widely from the wars which the Plantagenets of
the twelfth century had waged against the descendants of Hugh
Capet. For the success of Henry the Second, or of Richard the
First, would have made England a province of France. The effect
of the successes of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth was to
make France, for a time, a province of England. The disdain with
which, in the twelfth century, the conquerors from the Continent
had regarded the islanders, was now retorted by the islanders on
the people of the Continent. Every yeoman from Kent to
Northumberland valued himself as one of a race born for victory
and dominion, and looked down with scorn on the nation before