Excerpt from An Oration Pronounced Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University: July 17, 1851 French the language of the court, and exerting himself in various ways to make it the language of the country. But notwithstanding all his at tempts, successful and unsuccessful, at revolution and oppression, the Saxons not only remained in the land, but constituted the larger part of its population. Their language, though essentially modified by a liberal infusion of foreign words and idioms, still continued to be the popular language. Their institutions, though moulded into a new form by the influence of feudalism, were still pervaded more or less by the Saxon spirit. The two nations were perhaps equally bold and warlike but the Saxons were the more thoughtful, the Normans the more impulsive; the spirit of chivalry had much to do in mould ing the character of the latter, whereas we de toot no traces of it in the character of the former. For a while, it was no easy matter for them to dwell together as brethren; but time gradually subdued their mutual antipathies, and fused them into a common mass, so that the peculiarities of each could no longer be distinguished. And. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.