136 BRITISH AND FOREIGN 



and imaginative Celt ever westward before him into the 

 hills and the sea, so the rude and vigorous Germanic beasts 

 and weeds have driven the gentler and softer southern 

 types into Wales and Cornwall, Galloway and Connemara. 

 It is to the central European population that we owe or 

 owed the red deer, the wild boar, the bear, the wolf, the 

 beaver, the fox, the badger, the otter, and the squirrel. It 

 is to the central European flora that we owe the larger 

 part of the most familiar plants in all eastern and south- 

 eastern England. They crossed in bands over the old 

 land belt before Britain was finally insulated, and they 

 have gone on steadily ever since, with true Teutonic per- 

 sistence, overrunning the land and pushing slowly west- 

 ward, like all other German bands before or since, to the 

 detriment and discomfort of the previous inhabitants. Let 

 us humbly remember that we are all of us at bottom 

 foreigners alike, but that it is the Teutonic English, the 

 people from the old Low Dutch fatherland by the Elbe, 

 who have finally given to this isle its name of England, 

 and to every one of us, Celt or Teuton, their own Teutonic 

 name of Englishmen. We are at best, as an irate Teuton 

 once remarked, ' nozziiig but segond-hand Chermans.' In 

 the words of a distinguished modern philologist of our own 

 blood, ' English is Dutch, spoken with a Welsh accent.' 



