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the religious observances, were all changed. In this respect, 

 the occupation of England by the Saxons, differed essen- 

 tially from tlie conquest of Gaul by the Pranks. In IVancc 

 the institutions, the laws, the language, the religion, re- 

 mained comparatively unchanged. The handful of German 

 conquerors reigned as military superiors over a vanquished 

 people ; but the force of numbers gradually prevailed, and 

 the staple of the phydque and the morale of the French- 

 man remains to this day Romano Celtic. The Saxons, on 

 the other hand, took possession of Britain much as their 

 descendants have done of North America, driving before 

 them the aboriginal inhabitants, absorbing and assimilating 

 the few that remained ; and thus giving to the country 

 an essentially Saxon character. This they were enabled to 

 do much more readily from the thinness of the population. 

 This has sometimes been denied, and Britain, under the 

 Romans, represented as a well-peopled and highly civilized 

 country; but the results of the Saxon invasion prove de- 

 monstratively the contrary. It may be laid down as a 

 principle admitting of scarcely a single exception, that in 

 a country peopled by a mixed race, the language of the 

 majority will ultimately prevail, modified more or less by 

 the language of the minority, in proportion to their num- 

 bers. Thus, in Italy, conquered as it was repeatedly by 

 the Gothic nations, the Latin language continued prevalent, 

 diluted by the admixture of foreign idioms into the modern 

 Italian. Greece, Spain, and Portugal, are similar instances 

 of this principle. Perhaps the most striking instance is 

 furnished by the Normans, who, originally a Teutonic peo- 

 ple, when settled in the north of Prance, in the course of 

 two generations, gave up their own language, and adopted 

 that of the people they had conquered. During their 

 subsequent emigrations and conquests, the branch of the 

 Normans who invaded England again adopted their Teu- 

 tonic dialect, whilst the branch who invaded and conquered 



