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rex Anoflorum” or “ rex Anoiorum Saxonorum.” But 
O O 
whether the latter designation was used before Egbert or 
not, Alfred was certainly styled Angul-Saxonum Bex.” 
I am not pretending to write an exhaustive essay on the 
Anglo-Saxons, but as I have stated the objections, let me 
now produce a few reasons, cogent, I think them, for the 
retention of the term. First as to race. By Anglo-Saxons 
is meant the three tribes who invaded England from A.D. 
450 to A.D. 550. Then came the Danes, then the Normans. 
There is wanted some historical terminology which will 
distinguish the period before the fusion of the blood of these 
three sets of invaders from the period after the fusion. 
Has not the word “ English” been generally used to indicate 
the period from the time of Canute downwards ? Even then 
there was only partial fusion of Angle and Saxon and Dane, 
and the Norman was only beginning to arrive. In the 
nature of things historical, lines of demarcation must be 
rough. But better rough than none at all. And the word 
English” being by general understanding appropriated to 
one time, and “ Anglo-Saxon” to another, why mystify us 
by abolishing one term. The German called himself the 
Angle, the conquered Celt called him the Saxon. German 
and Celt are now one, began to be one when Christianity 
and Danish conquest welded the tribes into a nation, and 
when incessant intercine wars of petty chiefs ceased in the 
struggle for a kingdom. What then can be more appropriate 
than that Anglo-Saxon should be retained to designate the 
earlier period before the invader had fused with the older 
people into our modern English ? 
Now as to language. In literature classification is more 
accurate, rules are more definite, than in history. So we find 
the changes in our language more cleaily marked out than 
in our ancestry. True, the lines do coincide with those of 
history, literature only follows in the wake of events. In 
history “English” is of earlier date than it is in letters. First 
