later days have often been worthy successors of the heroes of Runnymede in patient and law-abiding assertion of their rights, only resorting to force when all other means had failed.

1 Feu'-dal-ism, the system by which vassals held lands from lords-superior on condition of military service.

2 Bu'-ry St. Ed'-munds, in Suffolk, so called from King Edmund, whose remains are buried there.

3 Court of Com'-mon Pleas, one of the superior law courts of Great Britain, presided over by the chief and three other justices.

* As'-size courts, at which cases are tried by a judge and jury.

ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

HAD the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in uniting all France under their government, it is probable that England would never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords, her prelates, would have been men differing in race and language from the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her great landowners would have been spent on the banks of the Seine. The noble language of Shakespeare and Milton would have remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, and would have been abandoned to the use of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence, except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman.

England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which her historians have generally treated as disastrous. Her interest was so directly opposed to the interest of her rulers, that she had no hope but in their errors and misfortunes. The talents

and even the virtues of her first six French kings1 were in one sense a curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of his father, and had

the king of France been as incapable as all the other successors of Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendency in Europe,

But, just then France, for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was govered by a princes of great firmness and ability. On the other hand, England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John was driven from Normandy; and the Norman nobles were compelled to make their election between the island and the Continent.

Shut up by the sea with the people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they gradually came to regard England as their country, and the English as their countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they had common interests and enemies.

The great-grandsons of those who had fought under William and Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship. The first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit.

Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of the preceding events is the history of wrongs inflicted and sustained by various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but which regarded each other with aversion.

In no country has the enmity of race been carried further than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely effaced. In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of

a Norman gentleman was, "May I become an Englishman!" His ordinary form of indignant inquiry was, "Do you take me for an EnglishThe descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years later was proud of the English name.

man ?"

The sources of the noblest rivers, which spread fertility over continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought in wild and barren mountain regions. To such a tract the history of our country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our glory.

Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the national character began to exhibit those features which it has ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders, islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their feelings, and their manners.

Then first appeared with distinctness that constitution which has ever since, through all changes, preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free governments in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the House of Commons held its first sittings. Then it was that the common law 5 rose to the dignity of a science. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of

England terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges, which still exist at both the great national seats of learning,' were founded.

Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then, too, appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many glories of England.

HAD John lived another month, a new French dynasty might have ruled in England; but now that the tyrant was no more, the sympathy of the nation was claimed for his son, a boy ten years of age, who was crowned at Gloucester nine days after his father's death.

The Great Charter was at once re-enacted, signed,