Returning now to the discussion of the masterly paper read by M. Du Chaillu at the British Association,[4] we may consider certain aspects of the question more in detail; conceding at the same time full credit to the ability of the disputants who dissented from the views expressed by the foreign savant. M. Du Chaillu was peculiarly fortunate in his critics. If his theory should survive the searching and trenchant criticisms of such men, his scholarship would command respect even if they should decline to accept his conclusions in full.

A loyal Briton does not lightly abandon what he conceives to be established or traditional views. This trait does not imply defect of philosophic insight or want of wide research. It denotes simply the influence of prepossession, opinionated habit, and conscious power. Nor is this influence unusual. Scholars differ even as "doctors" disagree. Dr. George Craik, whose name is familiar to every scholar of the English race, was liberal enough to concede, a quarter of a century before the advent of Du Chaillu as a Scandinavian protagonist, that the English language might have more of a Scandinavian than of a purely Germanic character; or, in other words, "more nearly resembled the Danish or Swedish than the modern German." The invading bands, he adds, by whom the dialect was originally brought over into Britain in the Fifth and Sixth centuries, were in all probability drawn in great part from the Scandinavian countries. At a still later date, too, this English population was directly and largely recruited from Denmark and the regions around the Baltic. Eastern and Northern England, from the middle of the Ninth Century, "was as much Danish as English." In the Eleventh Century the sovereign was a Dane.

M. Du Chaillu's theory rests upon other and perhaps stronger grounds, but these concessions from a thoughtful scholar at least will carry weight. The continuous existence of Scandinavian influence in England is suggestive of the circumstance that the Danish conquest of England preceded the Norman conquest by "exactly half a century." An Englishman (Odericus Vitalis), writing almost contemporaneously with the Norman conquest, describes his countrymen as having been found by the Normans "a rustic and almost illiterate people" (agrestes et pene illiteratos). And yet, says Dr. Craik, the dawn of the revival of letters in England may properly be dated from a point about fifty years antecedent to the Norman conquest. To what, then, must be ascribed this scholastic renascence? Very clearly to the intimate relations established between England and Normandy by Edward the Confessor. But there is no trace of the new literature (that of the Arabic school which was prevalent in Europe) having found its way to England "before the Norman conquest swept into the benighted old kingdom, carrying the torch of learning in its train." The name of Lanfranc alone gives splendor to that civilization which his genius created for the English race. He not only lighted the torch of learning, but he strengthened the reins of power. He restrained the lawless impetuosity of William the Conqueror; he imposed iron conditions upon the accession of William Rufus; he checked the atrocities, and finally broke the power, of Odo of Bayeux. His work was well done, and its effects are visible to this day. He was the real power behind the throne. It is not easy, says an eminent English writer, to trace through the length of centuries "the measureless and invisible benefits which the life of one scholar bequeaths to the world." But such was the life, the work, the bequest of this Norman scholar, who died honored and beloved even by the rude, sullen, and implacable race which had been subjugated by the Norman kings. But Dr. Craik, with all his liberality and learning, is not disposed to accept the theory of a great migration or settlement preceding, or accompanying or following, the Norman conquest in the Eleventh Century. To be sure, this theory was not elaborately or effectively presented until of late years; but Dr. Craik, writing as far back as the opening of our "War between the States," seems to contradict this theory by anticipation—"In point of fact, the Normans never transferred themselves in a body, or generally, to England. It was never thus taken possession of by the Normans. It was never colonized by these foreigners, or occupied by them in any other than a military sense. It received a foreign government, but not at all a new population." Yet even Dr. Craik seems to appreciate the lesson of "names." He thinks it remarkable, for instance, that though we find a good many names of natives of Gaul in connection with the last age of Roman literature, scarcely a British name has been preserved. Even in Juvenal's days the pleaders of Britain were trained by the eloquent scholars of Gaul. The significance of a name in determining family origin is a common assumption of our familiar speech. "That is a Virginian name," we say; and if we find many Virginian names in a given locality we naturally infer that the town, or the county, or the locality, large or small, was originally settled by Virginians. In one of our old Bluegrass counties two of these settlements were made in pioneer times, about two miles apart. One is known as "Jersey Ridge," the other as "Tuckahoe." If in both localities we find an English stock with Anglo-Norman names we should naturally assume a common derivation from the Anglo-Norman branch of the great British race.

But that accomplished philologist, Dr. Craik, seems to be quite in sympathy with the views of Du Chaillu touching the ancestral relations of the Scandinavian to the English race; and Dr. Craik's eminent American compeer, Mr. George P. Marsh, is not hopelessly wedded to fixed conclusions, and has by no means overlooked the obvious Scandinavian affinities of the English tongue. "Almost every sound," says the latter, "which is characteristic of English orthoËpy, is met with in one or other of the Scandinavian languages, and almost all their peculiarities, except those of intonation, are found in English; while between our articulation and that of the German dialects the most nearly related to the Anglo-Saxon there are many irreconcilable discrepancies." If to determine the relative proportions of linguistic and ethnic elements in dialect and race were "a hopeless and unprofitable task," this would seem to invalidate all general conclusions in the matter.

A few days after the very lively discussion of M. Du Chaillu's epochal paper in the Free Library of Newcastle, there appeared in a great newspaper a contemporary estimate of his views, which was received by its multitudinous constituency with profound interest and respect. It was the rolling voice of "the Thunderer"—the famous London Times. In all crises in the national life, the influence of this journal is felt. It is not a mere priestly oracle, silent except at times, but a divinity that never ceases to speak; clothed with strangely beneficent powers, and in the exercise of legitimate influence as resistless as the fabled might of the Scandinavian Thor. It forms opinion;—it fixes opinion;—it reflects opinion;—it gives effect to the popular will. It has been felicitously characterized as the "vast shadow of the public mind."

On the 21st of September, 1889, the Times, after a full report of the ethnological discussion in Section H, had this to say by way of editorial comment: "Perhaps the great sensation of the Section was M. Du Chaillu's paper, intended to prove that we are all Scandinavians.... This paper, combined with that of Canon Taylor, and the discussion that followed both, seemed to show that the time is ripe for a perfectly new investigation of the whole question of the origin and migration of the races which inhabit Europe and Asia; and, that, on lines in which language will play only a subordinate part."

Thus much for the startling theory discussed by the Anthropological Section at Newcastle.

In a subsequent correspondence, which appeared in the London Times, M. Du Chaillu challenged archÆologists to point out remains in any other part of Europe so like those of the early Anglo-Saxons in England as the relics he figures from Scandinavia in England. It is not always easy to indicate with precision the cradle of an ancient race; and even if such remains were found on the coasts of Holland and North Germany, the discovery would not seriously affect the conclusions that seem to have been reached as to ancestral relations of the Scandinavian and the Norman to the English race in England and the United States. One might abandon altogether the main line of M. Du Chaillu's argument, (1) his careful analysis of the Sagas and other ancient documents and (2) his comparison of the antiquities upon which the challenge rests, and yet there would remain something more than a strong presumption that the animating principle of the English race, in its leading branches, is the Scandinavian blood. It would seem to be quite in conformity with the law of nature that the daring, crafty, and indomitable race which still shapes the political destinies of men, which is historically traceable in its schemes of conquest and subjugation for a thousand years, and which is precisely traceable upon geographical lines in its movements of colonization or war, should have derived its enterprising characteristics from the only race which has demonstrably transmitted its conquering and colonizing traits within historic times: to wit, the Scandinavian pirates that were conceived upon stormy waters, spawned upon an icy coast, and swept, apparently in a career of predestined conquest, from the waters of the Baltic to the ends of the earth. The nations shrank from the Rover in fear. The Frenchman, at least, learned to dread his power, and the Saxon submitted with sullen acquiescence to his rule. He sowed the seed of conquest with his blood, and upon whatever shore he drove his keel he planted himself fiercely upon the soil to stay. Is it to be supposed for an instant that this puissant racial force was dissipated and lost? Not so. The light, the fire, the sweep, the coruscating energies, the resistless currents, the driving forces are still there. The power is not "off"!

Nevertheless, it may be—to use the phrase of the London Times—that "the time for a new investigation of the whole question is now ripe."