institutions, and customs, although it was too early yet to justify
the historian in giving to them the inclusive name of Englishmen.
They all, however, had part in the conquest of England, and it was
their union in that land that gave birth to the English people.

Little is known of the actual character and life of these people
who made the earliest England, but their Germanic inheritance is
traceable in their social and political framework, which already
prefigured the national organization that through centuries of
gradual development became modern England.

Out of their early modes grew the forms of English citizenship and
legislation, and the individual and public freedom which has slowly
broadened down from generation to generation. Later came the
modifying, if not transforming, influence of Christianity,
replacing the ancient nature-worship which they took with them to
their new home. On these foundations the English race, as it has
grown up in the land they made their own, and in other lands to
which like men and institutions have been carried, has reared its
various structures of nationality.

JOHN R. GREEN

Of the three English tribes the Saxons lay nearest to the empire, and
they were naturally the first to touch the Roman world; before the close
of the third century indeed their boats appeared in such force in the
English Channel as to call for a special fleet to resist them. The
piracy of our fathers had thus brought them to the shores of a land
which, dear as it is now to Englishmen, had not as yet been trodden by
English feet. This land was Britain. When the Saxon boats touched its