Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/33

Rh than for other Frenchmen, different for a Frenchman than for an American.

Now there can be no question that for the average Norman the recent period bulks larger than the earlier. His life is directly and constantly affected by the bureaucratic traditions of the Old Régime, by the new freedom and the land-distribution of the Revolution, by the coming of the railroad, the steamship, and the primary school. William the Conqueror, Philip Augustus, Joan of Arc, their deeds and their times, have become mere traditions to him, if indeed they are that. In all these changes, however, there is nothing distinctive, nothing peculiar, nothing that cannot be studied just as well in some other part of France. Their local and specifically Norman aspects are of absorbing interest to Normandy, but they are meaningless to the world at large. With the union with France in 1204 Norman history becomes local history, and whatever possesses more than local interest it shares with the rest of France. From the point of view of the world at large, the history of Normandy runs parallel with that of the other regions of France. Normandy will contribute its quota of great names to the world, in art and music and literature, in learning and industry and politics; it will take its part in the great movements of French history, the Reformation, the Revolution, the new republic; but it will be only a part of a larger whole and derive its interest for the