The Saxons thought theirs the
finest in the world till they were conquered by the Danes and the
Normans. This is the history of the human race. The quality of the
blood of a whole people has depended often upon the fate of a battle,
which in the ancient world doomed the vanquished to the hammer; and
the hammer changed the blood of those sold by it from generation to
generation. How many Norman robbers got their blood ennobled, and how
many Saxon nobles got theirs plebeianized by the Battle of Hastings;
and how difficult it would be for any of us to say from which we
descended--the Britons or the Saxons, the Danes or the Normans; or in
what particular action our ancestors were the victors or the
vanquished, and became ennobled or plebeianized by the thousand
accidents which influence the fate of battles. A series of successful
aggressions upon their neighbours will commonly give a nation a
notion that they are superior in courage; and pride will make them
attribute this superiority to blood--that is, to an old date. This
was, perhaps, never more exemplified than in the case of the Gurkhas
of Nepal, a small diminutive race of men not unlike the Huns, but
certainly as brave as any men can possibly be.
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