MONUMENTS. 255 



MONUMENTS. 



England is the monument of the Anglo-Saxons the people, 

 laws, manners, customs, language, all bear the strong impress of 

 that powerful race. Many of the cities belong to an earlier 

 period, but the rural population dwells in villages which for the 

 most part are of Anglo-Saxon foundation. In these, however, 

 hardly a wall remains which was laid before the Norman Con- 

 quest ; only in a few examples do the churches of our forefathers 

 retain arches, pillars, or inscriptions of earlier date. If we search 

 the face of the country, it is only here and there that local names 

 and traditions assign to Anglian warriors the giant dikes and 

 lofty tumuli which seem destined to outlive all the more solid 

 memorials of men. 



Nor are these names and traditions often to be trusted. Ac- 

 cording to tradition the great earth-mounds belong to Druids, 

 Romans, or Danes. We have the Dane's Dike at Flamborough, 

 the Dane's Graves north of Driffield, the Dane's Hills at Skip- 

 with, near York ; but I remember no mention of ' Saxon ' re- 

 mains, except in the narratives of some modern rustics, who may 

 be descanting on the mysterious circles of Thornborough, or the 

 King's Mound, near Driffield, in language borrowed from other 

 sources. Whatever their origin, there are few earthworks in 

 England more worthy of study than the Dane's Dike at Flam- 

 borough (p. 128), and the circular entrenchments at Thorn- 

 borough (p. 63). 



The names of the tumuli on the more conspicuous points of 

 the many hills between Scarborough and Whitby, and between 

 Guisborough and Helmsley, are Anglo-Saxon or Danish, mostly 

 combining some personal name with the general epithet How, 

 Houe or Hoe, often followed by Cross : thus Lilhoue Cross ; Sil- 

 houe ; Blakehowe ; Loose houe. This does not prove them to be 

 of Teutonic origin, but it deserves attention that what mytholo- 

 gical traditions are connected with them (such as that mentioned 

 in p. 210) point in the same direction. The opening of these 



