The impression we derive from the foregoing description of the Scandinavian physique among the more northern tribes recalls Professor Shaler's conclusions from a careful study of the measurement of fifty thousand troops from Kentucky, made by the astronomer Gould (a distinguished mathematician), who after the war took service in the Argentine Republic. "The results," he says, "are surprising. Their average height was nearly an inch greater than that of the New England troops; they exceed them equally in girth of chest, and the circumference of head is also very much larger. In size they come up to the level of the picked regiments of the Northern armies of Europe."[10] Yet these results were obtained from what was a levy en masse. It did not include "the rebel exiles" who were the "first running from the press," or, as is often said, "the flower of the State," and being in the main of a more exuberant habit of body would doubtless have given still better results. It is questionable if all Scandinavia could furnish two such heads as William Nelson's and Humphrey Marshall's. Ceteris paribus, said Leidy, "size is a measure of power"—referring to size of head. When General Marshall was warned that his great size would attract the attention of sharpshooters, he answered, "I have provided for that. I have a fat staff. There be six Richmonds in the field!" His aide and secretary was a Norman of wholly different type; of a slight figure, but of an activity, courage, vivacity, and endurance wholly unsurpassed. Captain Shaler (himself a capable soldier, with a strong dash of New England blood) singles out for special commendation the soldiers and officers of Morgan's command. He especially notes their high social quality, their physical vigor and activity, their endurance under severe tests, and their peculiar aptitude and penchant for the business of war. He waxes vigorously poetic in describing the martial qualities of the "Orphan Brigade."
Hereditary surnames are said to be memorials of race that can never be obliterated. If thousands of men, swept along in some great historic migratory movement which is followed and described by critical observers through country after country, through century after century, never "breaking ranks" except to plant and build, leaving the same names upon the official records of every dukedom, or kingdom, or commonwealth through which they pass; when their names, their features, their instincts, their mental habits, their daily speech, their terms of law, the language and routine of their courts, are impressed with the same ethnic stamp; when the same mental, physical, and moral characteristics are manifest generation after generation; when myriads of minute resemblances confirm the conclusions of the larger view, why lose one's self in the haunting mystery of apparent discrepancies in detail? Let us give full credit to each member of the triune ethnical Trust—which is charged with all the responsibilities of this magnificent modern world. If you wish to know how much can be said to thrill with delight that old Saxon element of your blood, read what the Count de Montalembert (another Frenchman) has said in his "Monks of the West." The enormous difficulties encountered by the Church in that old chaotic day approximately measure the shortcomings of the race. That the crude, repulsive Saxon should have been fashioned into the noble figure which Montalembert describes, speaks well for the essential worth of the Saxon; but what a tribute to the miraculous power of the Monk!
In the original prolusion and in the present preface the writer has simply tried to prepare the way for investigators of greater gifts. Here the Philologist is in his proper field. In pursuing this work, he becomes the genealogist of a race. Names of localities, names of men, are subject—like all other words—to every variety of phonetic change, and, it may be said, are in a perpetual state of flux. But there is a soul that survives all changes. It is for the scholar to catch it on the wing and fix a fleeting syllable for all time.
