254 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



seax, the short, broad dagger that hung at each 

 warrior's girdle, gathered to them much of the legend 

 and the art which gave colour and poetry to the life of 

 Englishmen' with much more very pretty writing 

 about the charms of war and piracy to our Saxon 

 ancestors. 



To many it may not be pleasant to contemplate the 

 other side of the shield. The Jingo breathing blood 

 and fury, must find it pleasanter to be told he comes 

 from a furious and bloodthirsty ancestry, than to learn 

 that far more probably he comes of a breed which 

 brave and fierce though it may have been was forced 

 for many generations to bend the neck to conquerors. 

 I am not sure that the few generations during which 

 the Saxons and Danes had to yield to Norman chiefs 

 did not considerably diminish the warlike ardour of 

 those races, even though in the long run Saxons and 

 Danes showed themselves the more tenacious and 

 enduring races. But, unless probabilities in the first 

 place, and the strongest possible form of existent 

 evidence in the second, are wholly deceptive, we are 

 not in the main an Anglo-Saxon race at all. The 

 story which tells how the British inhabitants of the 

 country were driven into Cornwall and Wales, except 

 some few who crossed over to Brittany, and other few 

 who took refuge in Cumberland, has never had any 

 historical support of value, and is a preposterous tale 

 on the face of it. No nation was ever so driven out 

 from such a country as Britain then was. Historians 

 who recognise the utter unlikelihood of the event, and 



