Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/50

 class has always worked downwards through a language common to all. The moral influence of this uninterrupted circulation of ideas from the highest to the lowest is very striking in our social condition, and in that of all the people descended from the Northmen, the younger branch of the great Anglo-Saxon race. Under every form of government, whether despotic as in Denmark, aristocratic as in Sweden, democratic as in the United States, or mixed as in England, they are, under all circumstances, distinguished from the other, the old Anglo-Saxon branch, by their strong nationality and distinct national characters. What is this but the diffusion of one mind, one spirit, one mode of thinking and doing, through the whole social body of each of these groups, by a common language and literature, such as it may be, giving one shape and tone to the mind of all? Turn from these groups of the European population, and look at the nationality or national character of the other branch of the race—or rather look for it. Where is it? Have Prussians, Saxons, Hanoverians, Hessians, Baden-Badenians, or whatever their rulers call them, any jot of this national feeling, any national existence at all? Have the Germans as a whole mass, or has any one group of them, any national character at this day, any common feeling among all classes upon any one subject? There is a want of that circulation of the same mind and intelligence through all classes of the social body, differing only in degree, not in kind, in the most educated and the most ignorant, and of that circulation and interchange of impressions through a language and literature common to all, which alone can animate a population into a nation. It would be a curious subject for the political philosopher to examine, what have been the effects of the literature, of a people upon their social condition. English literature works much more