by Billing; and each "wick," or "ham," or "stead,” or "tun" took its name from the kinsmen who dwelt together in it. The home or "ham" of the Billings would be Billingham, and the "tun" or town of the Harlings would be Harlington. But in such settlements the tie of blood was widened into the larger tie of land. Land with the German race seems everywhere to have been the accompaniment of full freedom. The freeman was strictly the freeholder, and the exercise of his full rights as a free member of the commu-10 nity to which he belonged was inseparable from the possession of his "holding." The landless man ceased, for all practical purposes, to be free, though he was no man's slave. In the very earliest glimpse we get of the German race we see them a race of landholders and 15 land - tillers. Tacitus, the first Roman who sought to know these destined conquerors of Rome describes them as pasturing on the forest glades around their villages, and ploughing their village fields. A feature which at once struck him as parting them from the 20 civilized world to which he himself belonged, was their hatred of cities, and their love even within their little settlements of a jealous independence. "They live apart," he says, "each by himself, as wood-side, plain, or fresh spring attracts him." And as each dweller 25 within the settlement was jealous of his own isolation, and independence among his fellow settlers, so each settlement was jealous of its independence among its fellow settlements. Each little farmer commonwealth was girt in by its own border or "mark," a belt 30 of forest or waste or fen which parted it from its fellow villages, a ring of common ground which none of its settlers might take for his own, but which served as a death-ground where criminals met their doom, and was

held to be the special dwelling-place of the nixie and the will-o'-the-wisp. If a stranger came through this wood, or over this waste, custom bade him blow his horn as he came, for if he stole through secretly, he was taken for a foe, and any man might lawfully slay him.

Within the village we find from the first a marked social difference between two orders of its indwellers. The bulk of its homesteads were those of its freemen, or "ceorls"; but among them were the larger homes of "eorls", or men distinguished among their fellows 10 by noble blood, who were held in an hereditary reverence, and from whom the leaders of the village were chosen in war-time, or rulers in time of peace. But the choice was a purely voluntary one, and the man of noble blood enjoyed no legal privilege above his fel-15 lows. The actual sovereignty within the settlement resided in the body of its freemen. Their homesteads clustered round a moot-hill, or round a sacred tree, where the whole community met to order its own industry and to frame its own laws. Here the field was 20 passed from man to man by the delivery of a turf cut from its soil, and the strife of farmer with farmer was settled according to the "customs" of the settlement, as its "elder-men" stated them, and the wrong-doer was judged and his fine assessed by the kinsfolk. Here, too, 25 the "witan," the Wise Men of the village, met to settle questions of peace and war, to judge just judgment, and frame wise laws, as their descendants, the Wise Men of later England, meet in Parliament at Westminster, to frame laws and do justice for the great empire which 30 has sprung from this little body of farmer-commonwealths in Sleswick.

The religion of the English was the same as that of the whole German family. Christianity, which had by

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this time brought about the conversion of the Roman Empire, had not penetrated as yet among the forests of the North. The common God of the English people, as of the whole German race, was Woden, the war-god, the guardian of ways and boundaries, to whom his wor-6 shippers attributed the invention of letters, and whom every tribe held to be the first ancestor of its kings. Our own names for the days of the week still recall to us the gods whom our English fathers worshipped in their Sleswick homeland. Wednesday is Woden's-day, 10 as Thursday is the day of Thunder, or as the Northmen called him, Thor, the god of air and storm and rain; Friday is Frea's-day, the goddess of peace and joy and fruitfulness, whose emblems, borne aloft by dancing maidens, brought increase to every field and stall they 15 visited. Saturday commemorates an obscure god, Sætere; Tuesday the dark god, Tiw, to meet whom was death. Behind these floated the dim shapes of an older mythology: Eostre, the goddess of the dawn, or of the spring, who lends her name to the Christian festival of 20 the Resurrection; "Wyrd," the death-goddess, whose memory lingered long in the "weird" of northern superstition; or the Shield-maidens, the "mighty women," who, an old rhyme tells us, "wrought on the battle-field their toil, and hurled the thrilling javelins." Nearer to the 25 popular fancy lay the deities of wood and fell, or the hero-gods of legend and song: "Nicor," the water-sprite, who gave us our water-nixies and "Old Nick"; "Weland," the forger of mighty shields and sharp-biting swords at a later time in his Berkshire "Weyland's smithy";' or 30 Egil, the hero-archer, whose legend is that of Cloudes ly or Tell. A nature worship of this sort lent itself ill to the purposes of a priesthood, and though a priestly class existed, it seems at no time to have had much

weight in the English society. As every freeman was his own judge and his own legislator, so he was his own house-priest; and the common English worship lay in the sacrifice which he offered to the god of his hearth.

II.

TOWN AND COUNTRY.

BY SAMUEL SMILES.'

GREAT towns do not necessarily produce great men. On the contrary, the tendency of life and pursuits in great towns is rather to produce small men. The whirl of business and pleasure which pervades the life of cities distracts the mind and hinders its growth. There is a constant succession of new excitements, producing no 10 permanent impression, because one effaces the other. While the country boy is allowed to grow up, the city boy is rushed up. The latter is sharp and clever in his way by perpetual friction with his fellows, and when he becomes quick and alert in his special business he stops 15 there and goes no further.

City life is a foe to intellectual work. There is too much excitement and too little repose. When the newspaper is read, and the business is done, and the play is seen, the work of the day is over. The young Londoner 20 makes few friends, and if he makes them they are like himself. The late Dr. Guthrie,' while in London, mixed much with city as well as country bred young men. He said, in his Autobiography: "It was then that I

first saw the narrow limits and defects of the ordinary education of English schools. The city lads were, I doubt not, thorough masters of their own particular department of business; but, beyond the small hole they filled-like certain shell-fish in the sea - rocks— they were amazingly ignorant of everything outside." Carlyle, in his rather contemptuous way, said of the Londoners," All London-born men, without exception, seem to be narrow-built, considerably perverted men, rather fractions of men."

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Nearly all the great men of England, as well as of London, have been country born and country bred. It is easy to understand this. In cities a young man is but one of a multitude; his neighbors know nothing of him, and he knows nothing of them. He sees what 15 he has always seen, and, provided his pleasures and wants are always satisfied, he receives but little impulse towards further improvement. It is altogether different with the young man born in the country, who comes, as it were, fresh from his mother-earth. There 20 he is more of an individual; he is also more responsible to those about him. He is accustomed to do many things for himself that are done for city boys by the accurate machinery of town life. He is not distracted by diversity of excitement. He has time to grow. He 25 knows his neighbors, and they know him. He forms friendships which often last for life; and it is more important to a young man to make one good friend than a dozen indifferent acquaintances. He comes into more direct contact with his fellows, and his mind reacts upon 30 theirs. The impressions then made upon him grow, and if the soil be good they will become fertile elements of character. "There is a country accent," said La Rochefoucauld, "not in speech only, but in thought, conduct,