[167] The discovery of Uriconium and of Roman remains throughout England, and even in London, during the last few years, strongly suggests that the beauty of the English race is derived from a far greater intermixture of southern blood than was formerly suspected; and the racial baptism, repeated by the invasion of the Normans, must also have brought with it Gallo-Romans in considerable numbers. We can hardly doubt that the handsome peasantry of south-western Ireland is the produce of Spanish or Mediterranean innervation; and a comparison with the country people of Orotava in Tenerife, where the Irish have again mixed with the mingled Hispano-Guanche race, shows certain remarkable points of family likeness. On the other hand, except in certain parts of Great Britain, especially the Danelagh or Scandinavianised coasts and the counties occupied by the Angli and other Teutonic peoples, the English race remarkably differs from both its purer congeners, the homely Scandinavians and Germans. The general verdict of foreigners confirms its superior beauty, which, indeed, is evident to the most superficial observer.
[168] It appears probable that the reverence paid to women by the ancient Germans and Gauls arose from what Tacitus calls “some divine and prophetic quality resident in their women;” from the superstitious belief that the weaker sex was more subject to inspiration, divination, second sight, and other abnormal favours of the gods. The Frauen-cultus of the present age, which in the United States has become an absurdity, would be the relic and survival of this pagan fancy.
[169] The author cannot say whether due care was taken when making these observations. Amongst Englishmen, when the thermometer held in the mouth exceeds 98°·5, there is suspicion of fever.
[170] Marquis Massimo d’Azeglio observed this fact among the paviours and the wine-carters, who form almost a separate caste of the Trans-Tiber population.
[171] Not always, as the common river-name Thvátt-á (wash or dip-water) proves.
[172] These satirical songs are known to the Greenlanders, who thus satisfy their malice, “preferring to revenge even than to prevent an injury.” Yet, the Icelanders have a proverb, “Let him beware, lest his tongue wind round his head.”
[173] Usually but erroneously translated “headlands,” instead of “head of men.”
[174] The popular assertion, “nothing can be more natural than that female chastity should be more prevalent in a northern than in a southern climate,” is simply a false deduction from insufficient facts. It is a subject far too extensive for a footnote; we may simply observe that the Scandinavians have never been distinguished for continence, nor are the northern more moral than the southern Slavs. In fact, the principal factor of feminine “virtue” seems to be race not climate.
[175] “To go by the way of the rock” was the old pagan euphuism for self-destruction; and the modern Hindú, as the Girnár Cliff shows, preserves the practice of “Altestupor” and “Odin’s Hall.” Suicide is now, like the duello, extinct, and the few cases recorded in late history are looked upon as phenomena. We remark the same rarity of self-destruction both in Scotland and Ireland, a wonderful contrast to England, which, again, despite its ill-fame, shows favourably in this matter by the side of France.
[176] The reader has only to remember how much of Britain was Danish to understand the Snorra-Edda’s express statement about Icelanders and Englishmen speaking the same tongue, “Vèr erum einnar tungu;” and Bartolin (Antiquitates Danicæ), “Eademque lingua (Norwegica seu Septentrionalis) usurpabatur per Saxonicum, Daniam, Sueciam, Norvegiam, et partem Angliæ aliquam.”