Page:A short history of social life in England.djvu/93

Rh " and "radiant," while even to-day our language bears traces of the Conquest, and the very words separate master from servant. Thus, in the fields animals were called sheep, oxen, and calves, fed by poor Englishmen; at table they became mutton, beef, and veal, eaten by the Normans. Both peoples had to pass through a fiery ordeal, but there rose as from a furnace a new product—the English national character; and to its fusion of Norman fire with Saxon earnestness we owe the noblest scenes in our "rough island story." It is the "Norman graft upon the sturdy Saxon tree" that has made the English people great, and produced the scholars, soldiers and sailors that are the pride of her history. It is likewise this blend of Norman, Saxon, and Dane, this single race of Englishmen, that has built up the young nation across the restless Atlantic. Our kin are their kin, our forefathers are their forefathers, while we are bound together not only in blood and in speech, but by a rich inheritance of noble achievement and glorious association.