Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/21

 four centuries and a half, assimilating every thing to one form and principle,—when the second wave of the northern populations, the Danes or Northmen, came, under Swein and Canute the Great, to invigorate and renew the social elements left by the first. The moral power of this people—the Anglo-Saxons and Northmen being essentially the same people—has left deeper impressions on society, and of a nobler character, than the despotic material power of the Romans. It is in activity at the present hour in European society, introducing into every country more just ideas than those which grew up amidst the ruins of the Roman empire, of the social relations of the governing and the governed. The history of modern civilisation resolves itself, in reality, into the history of the moral influences of these two nations. All would have been Roman in Europe at this day in principle and social arrangement,—Europe would have been, like Russia or Turkey, one vast den of slaves, with a few rows in its amphitheatre of kings, nobles, and churchmen, raised above the dark mass of humanity beneath them, if three boats from the north of the Elbe had not landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet fourteen hundred years ago, and been followed by a succession of similar boat expeditions of the same people, marauding, conquering, and settling, during six hundred years, viz. from 449 to 1066. All that men hope for of good government and future improvement in their physical and moral condition—all that civilised men enjoy at this day of civil, religious, and political liberty—the British constitution, representative legislature, the trial by jury, security of property, freedom of mind and person, the influence of public opinion over the conduct of public affairs, the Reformation, the liberty of the press, the spirit of the age—all that is or has been of value to man in modern times as a member of society, either in Europe or in the New