Till late years, the English
feeling against the stranger lasted harsh and strong. The farmer,
strong in his laws of settlement, tried at once to pass him into the
next parish. The labourer, not being versed in law, hove half a
brick at him, or hooted him through the town. It was in the fens,
perhaps, that the necessity of combined effort for fighting the brute
powers of nature first awakened public spirit, and associate labour,
and the sense of a common interest between men of different countries
and races.
But the progress was very slow; and the first civilizers of the fen
were men who had nothing less in their minds than to conquer nature,
or call together round them communities of men. Hermits, driven by
that passion for isolated independence which is the mark of the
Teutonic mind, fled into the wilderness, where they might, if
possible, be alone with God and their own souls. Like St. Guthlac of
Crowland, after wild fighting for five-and-twenty years, they longed
for peace and solitude; and from their longing, carried out with that
iron will which marked the mediaeval man for good or for evil, sprang
a civilization of which they never dreamed.
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