As the Conqueror stood among the sovereigns of that day, so stood the Normans among the contemporary races. They were of peculiar type, these men—both sovereign and subject—and were cast in a like mold. They had body, sap, color, concentrated vigor, and inbred Thracian fire. They had a sort of racial distinction which in its merely personal aspects was never lost. Mingling with all races, they yet stood in a sense separate and apart from all. They were as the Haut Brion among the wines of the Bordelais. But, unlike their native vine, they bore transplantation to any land, and drew perpetual vigor from every soil. Strange as it may seem, there is a confessed incapacity for colonization in the Frenchman of to-day, and stranger still is the remedy for this defect which some of their leading thinkers have proposed, to wit, that the Frenchman should transmogrify himself into an Anglo-Saxon. Certainly a grotesque transformation, if effected in the manner proposed by those pessimistic prophets Demolins and LemaÎtre. France (they say) must have colonial expansion! The Anglo-Saxon is the only successful expansionist; we must Anglo-Saxonize France! They forget that the Anglo-Saxon himself is indebted for his success as a colonist and trader to the Scandinavian Frenchmen who colonized England under William the Conqueror, and that it was not until the Norman's demoniac spirit of "enterprise" took possession of the Anglo-Saxon thegns and ceorls that they even felt the impulse to "go down to the sea in ships." Later, too, they should remember, there was an industrial colonization of England by the Frenchmen who were relentlessly expatriated in the days of the dragonades. What France then lost has never been fully regained. When she lost the Norman element in its early Scandinavian form, her capacity for colonial expansion was seriously impaired. When she colonized England by an indiscriminate exclusion of the Huguenots from her own soil, her capacity for normal evolution was lost. The recanting or subjugated element that remained is probably represented by the prescriptive "free-thinking" anti-clerical element of to-day. The profane spirit of the English "Bigod" had been imported into the religion of France, and "bigotry" may discredit the claims of the noblest faith. The extreme reactionary result in this instance is an intolerant unbelief, passing at times into a ferocious contempt for country, constitutions, and creeds.

The storms of Norman conquest seemed scarce to touch the depths of Anglo-Saxon life. No marked change in the methods of local administration accompanied the change of kings. The rude strength of the old manorial system was proof against radical change. Far less complex than the centralized administration of modern France, it was even better calculated to accommodate itself to the changes wrought by the hand of war. Built low and strong, it stood four-square to every shock and blast. It was only the high towers that toppled in the sweep of the storm. When it passed, the village-group, the manorial life, and the rude strong sons of the soil were still there. Andrews, an authority upon early Anglo-Saxon life, gives us a picture of the "yeoman" which leaves much to be desired in the way of picturesqueness and charm. Upon the testimony of priests and leeches he is depicted as a swinish, servile sort of creature—gross, stupid, sensual, superstitious, cruel, and even "beastly"; with no conception whatever of "freedom," and only the most bestial conceptions of life. The routine of husbandry after the Conquest knew no change. A Norman baron unseats the Saxon thegn, but the villein and ceorl take up the labors of the old manorial life; the new lord receives the customary dues, and protection against lawlessness is extended to bond and free. This servile Saxon class were the descendants of a soldier race which many years before the advent of the conquering Norman had rudely dispossessed the ancient inhabitants of the soil, and were themselves first to "harry," no doubt (for harry is an old Saxon word imported from the North), the whole of that turbulent realm which William harried only in part. But the Norman harried well. It may be said that Northumbria never rallied from the devastation until the magical agencies of modern industrialism came to repair the ravage that he had wrought. But elsewhere the "Conquest" worked no such change. The Norman simply gave completeness, variety, elevation, splendor, and finish to the Saxon's rude but solid work. The transformation wrought through the genius of the soldier-statesman was not the plodding reconstruction of a shattered kingdom upon ancient lines, but the orderly evolution of a new and splendid civilization within conditions "visualized" by the Conqueror's creative brain. The primordial and paramount condition of this work was the permanent establishment of English unity at the gathering of the people upon Salisbury Plain. When the people rallied in loyal allegiance to the throne, the old conceptions of "feudalism" ceased to exist—vanishing centuries before Cervantes smiled Spain's "chivalry" away. In our own Websterian phrase, England was henceforth "one and indivisible." The fusion of warring elements was now as complete as if welded together by the hammer of Thor. The consequences of that initial step are told in the history of the English race—consequences which this imperial statesman alone had the genius to forecast. To no mere man does the line of the Nineteenth Century poet so well apply—

This Norman adventurer who had now practically established all his pretensions—legitimate and illegitimate—was destined to establish, also, a line of Anglo-Norman princes who showed in varied ways that transmitted blood would tell. Shakespeare, in his splendid series of historical plays, has painted in vivid colors and fine dramatic sequence the manifestation of this Anglo-Norman influence through a succession of closely connected reigns—weaving into brilliant and picturesque history the fireside traditions which fascinated his youthful mind. The story that he tells is unique, not only in the literature of the race, but in the literature of man. "The only history that I know," said an English statesman discussing the annals of his race, "is the history that Shakespeare wrote." No formal historic writer has presented so faithfully or effectively the characteristic traits and temper of that time. It is a philosophic study, resting chiefly upon a traditional basis, and cast in a powerful dramatic form. And who so fit as Shakespeare to depict the features of a royal race? This strong portrayal of their salient or their subtler qualities, in statecraft or in war, is something quite beyond the reach of a mere historian's art. Through all this dramatic movement we note the wild tricks of an hereditary blood; the troublous or turbulent play of passions flowing from an alien source. It is in this record alone we find that magical touch, that moving speech, that strange, pathetic eloquence which flows from royal lips inspired to utterance by the sorrows of an Anglo-Norman brain. Doubtless it is Shakespeare's noblest work. It is certainly a product of the same imperial spirit that breathes in the aspirations, the utterances, and the acts of the "melancholy Dane."

Recent researches among the Scandinavian population of the Northern States seem to show marked psychological distinctions in the several branches of the Scandinavian stock, denoting original differences in the mental make-up and manifestations of the Norwegian, the Swede, and the Dane; brainy races all, but the psychological manifestations of their daily life differing in each. The Swede and his Norwegian brother have a strong, instinctive inclination for the ruder activities of their social environment—building, boating, agriculture, railway construction, commercial operations, etc.; the Dane, on the contrary, manifesting an equally marked predilection for life in its contemplative or Æsthetic aspects—for philosophy, the belleslettres, the fine arts, and the higher lines of scholastic research. His physiognomy is differentiated, so to speak, by "the pale cast of thought." Is it not possible that this deep intra-racial distinction was recognized by the creator of the "melancholy Dane"?

But "Hamlet" was not altogether a product of Shakesperean imagination. The original lines of the character seem to have been found in the personality of a contemporary thinker, himself, like Hamlet, an obstinate questioner of invisible things. In those eager Elizabethan times when Drake and Raleigh were "discovering" other worlds and Shakespeare imagining new, there lived near the ancient city of Bordeaux a modest country gentleman—a grand seigneur of peculiar distinction—who on his father's side was of direct English descent. He bore a patrician title; he was lord of a rich domain, and enjoyed social and civic distinctions of the highest sort. His scholarship was ample and unique; his social pretensions were not in excess of his rank; and he bore his weight of learning "lightly like a flower." Rank, riches, scholarship, distinction—all these he had, and more; he had the prodigious gift of common sense, with a sort of cynical humor flashing through an habitual mood of philosophic thought that gave to his writing—and notably to his book of observations and reflections—a peculiar archaic charm. One could not pay a higher tribute to his literary power than to add, that his writings had a powerful fascination for Shakespeare himself. These philosophic essays supplied the great dramatist with many subtle and striking thoughts, and the very personality of the modest country gentleman made a profound impression upon Shakespeare's mind; so marked an impression indeed that according to the affirmation or suggestion of an ingenious modern scholar, the great English writer—himself of Anglo-Norman blood—found in this Anglo-French philosopher the original of that incomparable dramatic figure—the "melancholy Dane." If this theory be correct, it simply adds to the evidence of a certain bizarre weirdness in the working of that old Scandinavian blood. Be this as it may, if the mind of Shakespeare could be touched and inspired by the philosophic reflexions of a provincial thinker in France (a Frenchman with a strong suspicion of Anglo-Norman blood), there are doubtless others (some with the same ethnic affinities) that may profitably be reached in the same way; and lest the Anglo-Normans of our Bluegrass "Arcady" should take themselves too seriously, as even the wisest may do, in the momentous matter of "family," "rank," "blood," and "race," it would be well at parting to introduce for their consideration the antiquated opinions of the same ingenious Frenchman, who, wise as he was, did not always perhaps take matters seriously enough. In this instance no doubt his views will carry weight.

Thus much by way of preface and apology (if there be need of either) in closing an excursive dissertation upon the ethnological theories of Monsieur Paul Du Chaillu, accompanied with some interesting reflections from the pen of another Frenchman who, though not "modern" in the same sense, seems to have been in some of his conceptions quite judicious and even elevated in his views. This quaint, genial, and sagacious philosopher—the author of a famous book of "Essays"—was the Seigneur de la Montaigne, Count of Perigord and sometime Mayor of Bordeaux, whose greatest title to fame is this—that he was the favorite author of William Shakespeare, the foremost writer of all time. Possibly Montaigne by contribution of thought was an unconscious collaborator in the construction of "Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark," a drama which illustrates in brilliant, powerful, and fantastic fashion the varied intellectual and emotive capacities of the Scandinavian blood. In that royal Anglo-Norman, "Prince Hal" of England, the English dramatist depicts the man of action; in Hamlet, the brooding Prince of Denmark, he presents the man of thought. They were the favorite children of Shakespeare's prolific brain.

"'Tis a scurvy custom and of very ill-consequence," says the ingenious Chevalier Montaigne, "that we have in our kingdom of France to call every one by the name of his manor or seigneury, and the thing in the world that does the most prejudice and confounds families and descents.... We need look no further for example than our own royal family, where every partage creates a new sir-name, whilst in the meantime the original of the family is totally lost. There is so great liberty taken in these mutations that I have not in my time seen any one advanced by fortune to any extraordinary condition who has not presently had genealogical titles added to him new and unknown to his father.

"How many gentlemen have we in France who by their own talk are of royal extraction? More I think than who will confess they are not.

"Was it not a pleasant passage of a friend of mine? There were a great many gentlemen assembled together; about the dispute of one lord of the manor with another, which other had in truth some pretty eminence of titles and alliances, above the ordinary scheme of gentry. Upon the debate of this priority of place, every one standing up for himself, to make himself equal to him; one, one extraction, another another; one the near resemblance of name; another of arms; another an old worm-eaten patent, and the least of them great-grandchild to some foreign king. When they came to sit down to dinner, my friend, instead of taking his place amongst them, retiring with most profound congees, entreated the company to excuse him for having lived with them hitherto at the saucy rate of a companion; but being now better informed of their quality, he would begin to pay them the respect due to their birth and grandeur; and that it would ill become him to sit down among so many princes; and ended the farce with a thousand reproaches.

"Let us in God's name," continues the illustrious writer, "satisfy ourselves with what our fathers were contented and with what we are; we are great enough if we understand rightly how to maintain it; let us not disown the fortune and condition of our ancestors, and lay aside those ridiculous pretences that can never be wanting to any one that has the impudence to alledge them."