Excerpt from Older England, Illustrated by the Anglo-Saxon Antiquities in the British Museum in a Course of Six Lectures: To Which Is Added, by Special Permission of the Council of the British Archaeological Association, a Paper Read Before That Body, and Entitled the Myth of the Week

The present course of Lectures, being the second which, by the kind permission of the Authorities at the British Museum, I have been allowed to deliver to a private audience of ladies and gentlemen Specially interested in this subject, has been called forth by the unexpected -success of the former course, delivered just before Christ mas last year.

On the former occasion I was much encouraged in the work which I felt called upon to do, by-the cordial sym pathy-expressed all round by those who did me the honour to attend; by the flattering notices of my work in the public journals; and by the hearty and almost unexpected appreciation of my work by certain men of high standing in the world of science and art, who, instead of throwing obstacles in my way, have done everything they possibly could to facilitate my effort to bring the English people to a knowledge and love of their. Own language, literature, classic remains, and mythology.

And herein I must beg my readers not to misunderstand my own claims. I do not put myself forward as the prophet who is to teach a new sect; the master who is to found a new school I - Far from it! I am merely one of the many who have felt the want of a knowledge of the history of our language, our grammar, and ourliterature. I never knew that we had a grammar until I read, at Berlin, a quarter. Of a century ago, a book published by Dr. Koch under the title of Eine Histo rische Grammatik der Englischen Sprache An Historical Grammar of the English Here, for the first time, I saw that we had a grammar and a language of our own, and from that moment resented, as a cruel wrong done to me, the neglect of our noble tongue in our High Schools. It was the theory of the old days, and it is almost as much so now, that all a man wanted was to know Latin. With the classic forms in his mind, derived from the Eton Latin Grammar, he would be set up as a well educated member of Society.

As with our language, so with our history. We are no where in history, we English Our story begins with the Norman Conquest. The Norman barons spoke French, and the Norman monks wrote Latin; therefore they were nearer to the true source of civilisation and refinement -rome than any other nation, so, as they came to Eng land, we will, if you please play at being descended from them, was the thought in the minds of the writers of history and grammar in the last century and the beginning of this. Who, then, are the English What are they? Where are they These questions have never been satisfactorily answered, on account of the snobbishness of our teachers, who have ignored the English name.

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