Page:The New Forest - its history and its scenery.djvu/179

Rh to the Conqueror, who lived amongst them; whilst the Northmen across the Humber bid him defiance. Every one must to this day notice the extreme deference, almost amounting to a painful obsequiousness, of the lower classes in the southern, compared with their independent manner in the northern, parts of England. We find, too, mingled, however, with characteristics from other sources, the West-Saxon element not only in the appearance of the long-limbed Forest peasantry, with their narrow head and shoulders, and loose, shambling gait, but also in their slowness of perception. They betray, too, to this hour that worst Teutonic trait of fatalism, observable in all their epitaphs, and in their daily expression, "It was not to be," applied to anything which does not take place. Notwithstanding, too, their apparent servility, an amount of cunningness and craft peeps out, which in a different age compelled the Conqueror to make special laws against assassination.

Much must be set against these drawbacks. Enslaved to an extent which no modern historian has dared to reveal, and can only be fully conceived by the dreadful story of The Chronicle,—treated as beasts rather than even slaves,—the West-Saxons 161