ITS BENEFITS.--Had this progress continued, had this grasp of power
remained without hinderance or relaxation, the result would have been the
destruction or amalgamation of the vigorous English, so as to form a
romance language similar to the French, and only different in the amount
of Northern and local words. But the Norman power, without losing its
title, was to find a limit to its encroachments. This limit was fixed,
_first_, by the innate hardihood and firmness of the Saxon character,
which, though cast down and oppressed, retained its elasticity; which
cherished its language in spite of Norman threats and sneers, and which
never lost heart while waiting for better times; _secondly_, by the
insular position of Great Britain, fortified by the winds and waves, which
enabled her to assimilate and mould anew whatever came into her borders,
to the discomfiture of further continental encroachments; constituting
her, in the words of Shakspeare,
"... that pale, that white-faced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean's roaring tides,
And coops from other lands her islanders;"
and, _thirdly_, to the Crusades, which, attracting the nobles to
adventures in Palestine, lifted the heel of Norman oppression off the
Saxon neck, and gave that opportunity, which alone was needed, to make
England in reality, if not in name--in thews, sinews, and mental strength,
if not in regal state and aristocratic privilege--Saxon-England in all its
future history.
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