have not given the British of the nineteenth
century a greater superiority over the Chinese,
than their ships gave the Normans over the
Franks of the ninth century. After domineering
for a hundred years over the north
of France, a Frenchified colony of Scandinavians,
expressing northern ideas in Roman
words, came over to England, and calling
themselves conquerors, because the Norman
pretender was victorious over the Saxon
pretender, have ever since given themselves
the airs of masters among the inhabitants of
the British islands.

The coast folk of the British islands, by
whom I mean the populations of Scandinavian
origin, although they may not now be
all addicted to seafaring pursuits, are the
truest descendants and representatives of
the Normans. Their names prove it. Were
I asked, what is the great distinctive peculiarity
of the Scandinavian, as distinguished
from the Asiatic, Greek, and Roman nations?
I should answer individual independence.
From Paris to Pekin you will find the notion
prevalent, that it is right to have a master
and obey his will.

The passion for independence, which lords
it over the whole of Scandinavian manners,
has expressed itself in many ways. I find its
all-pervading spirit in everything I have read
and everything I have observed of them.
When Rollo, the ancestor of William, was
bought with the duchy of Normandy to
become a Frenchman; Charles the Simple, the
French King, required the duke to kiss his
foot as his subject. The pirate refused, and
requested a soldier to do it in his stead. When
the soldier stooped to kiss the foot he seized
hold of it and threw the monarch on his
back. I have seen a similar pride among the
Scotch Coast Folk. When the last of the
Stuarts, instigated by their Jesuit advisers,
tried to extinguish presbyterianism in Scotland,
not a few martyrs were found bearing
Scandinavian names. No doubt faith was
strong in the Covenanters, but the hereditary
independence of race must be counted for
something in making up the strength of the
heroism of which Scotland was the scene.

The Scandinavian independence manifests
itself among the Scotch Coast Folk by a
severe abhorrence of debt. The penny wedding
is a contrivance to avoid debt. Parisian
work-people and French peasantry get into
debt, proverbially, to give princely entertainments
at their weddings. A short detention,
they say, is of no consequence at the outset
of the long journey of life. The Scotch fishers
differ from this opinion entirely. A baker
whose shop is near the head of the Leith
Walk, Edinburgh, said to me, "I never
refused credit to any of the Newhaven fishers,
and I never had a bad debt. During thirty
years I have not lost thirty pence by them, even
from mistakes." The humiliation of alms is
still more unknown than the humiliation of
debt. Indeed when any great calamity occurs,
such as the loss of many nets, or several boats,
they accept gratefully the money subscribed
for them. Probably they distinguish, clearly
enough, that in the presence of calamity no
man upon earth can be independent of his
fellows. But pauperism, the regular dependence
of the poorer class upon the richer
classes of society, is an unknown abuse.

The stern austerity of their manners in the
last century was only another expression of
their hatred of the humiliation of man by
man. Just as the Courts of Louis the Fourteenth
and Louis the Fifteenth, of a Duke of
Weimar, or a King of Oude (where the place
of royal mistress was an object of ambition
to all courtly families) are natural sequences
of Cæsarism, the stern punishment of the
profligacy which humiliates one man to
another is a natural sequence of the proud
independence of the sea-kings. Every young
woman lived under the protection of the flag
of the boat of her father. Every bride was
enfolded in the flag of the boat of her
husband. However stern the punishments of
profligacy may have been in former ages in
Scandinavia, in the last century they had
softened in Scotland into ducking in the river
and riding the stang or pole. The Scottish
Coast Folk had ideas exactly the reverse of
the French, among whom court manners
became popular morals. The results are as
greatly contrasted as the ideas. In Paris
every third inhabitant is legally no man's
child. This saddest of all the forms of
infancy does not occur in some fishing villages
in Scotland once within the memory of
man. Surely a hereditary code of manners
which almost abolishes this form of cruelty,
by which life itself is inflicted as an affliction
upon innocence, is worthy of the study of
the students of society!

A story which was often told me with
solemn awe, of a winter evening, related to
an occurrence which took place at the Bridge
of Don in the last century. A wealthy family
from the south came to reside in a mansion
in the neighbourhood. They brought with
them several servants; and, among them an
impudent fellow who soon excited against
himself the general detestation of the
villagers by his effeminacy and insolence. On
arriving, the family took into their service
an orphan girl whose father had been drowned
at sea, whose mother had died of grief, and
whose only brother had entered the navy
during the American war. He had been
persuaded to take this step by the gentlefolk
who undertook to take care of his sister.
The modesty, beauty, and forlornness of the
orphan girl made her a general favourite.
Early one morning the news spread
from cottage to cottage that the young
nursery-maid had disappeared during the
night. Fears were entertained lest she
should have fallen down among the rocks
of the chasm and been hurt, killed, or drowned
in the Black Nook. That morning the fishers