Page:The Normans in European History.djvu/65

Rh a leaven to the whole—quick to absorb Frankish law and Christian culture but retaining its northern qualities of enterprise, of daring, and of leadership. It is no accident that the names of the leaders in early Norman movements are largely Norse. And finally a race of princes, high-handed and masterful but with a talent for political organization, state-builders at home and abroad, who made Normandy the strongest and most centralized principality in France and joined to it a kingdom beyond the seas which became the strongest state in western Europe.