The name is absent

marshes are the abodes of monsters and dragons ;
wood-spirits bewilder and decoy the wanderer to
destruction : the Nicors house by the side of lakes
and marshes¹ : Grendel, the man-eater, is a “mighty
stepper over the mark ² ” : the chosen home of the
firedrake is a fen ³.

The natural tendency, however, of this state of
isolation is to give way ; population is an ever-ac-
tive element of social well-being : and when once
the surface of a country has become thickly stud-
ded with communities settled between the Marks,
and daily finding the several clearings grow less
and less sufficient for their support⁴, the next step
is the destruction of the Marks themselves, and the
union of the settlers in larger bodies, and under
altered circumstances. Take two villages, placed
on such clearings in the bosom of the forest, each
having an ill-defined boundary in the wood that
separates them, each extending its circuit wood-
ward as population increases and presses upon the
land, and each attempting to drive its Mark further
into the waste, as the arable gradually encroaches
upon this. On the first meeting of the herdsmen,
one of three courses appears unavoidable : the com-
munities must enter into a federal union ; one must

ɪ Beow. 1. 2822.

^a Beow. 1. 269δ. micle mearcstapan.

³      “ Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen

Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen.”

Shaksp. Coriol. act iv. sc. 1.

¹ "Eacilitatempartiendi Camporum Spatiapraestant.” Tac.Germ.26.
But as the space diminishes, so also diminishes the stability of a form
of society founded upon its existence.

attack and subjugate the other ; or the two must
coalesce into one on friendly and equal terms¹.
The last-named result is not improbable, if the gods
of the one tribe are common to the other: then
perhaps the temples only may shift their places a
little. But in any case the intervening forest will
cease to be Mark, because it will now lie in the
centre, and not on the borders of the new commu-
nity. It will be converted into common pasture,
to be enjoyed by all on fixed conditions ; or it may
even be gradually rooted out, ploughed, planted
and rendered subject to the ordinary accidents of
arable land : it will become folcland. public land,
applicable to the general uses of the enlarged state,
nay even divisible into private estates, upon the
established principles of public law. And this pro-
cess will be repeated and continue until the family
becomes a tribe, and the tribe a kingdom ; when
the intervening boundary lands, cleared, drained
and divided, will have been clothed with golden
harvests, or portioned out in meadows and com-
mon pastures, appurtenant to villages ; and the
only marks remaining will be the barren mountain
and moor of the frontiers, the deep unforded rivers,
and the great ocean that washes the shores of the
continent.

¹ Histoiy supplɪesnumerous illustrations of this process. Rome grew
out of the union of the Rhamnes and Luceres with the Sabines : and
generally speaking in Greece, the origin of the τrdλtr lies in what may
be called the compression of the κωμaι. The aγopa is on the space of
neutral ground where all may meet on equal terms, as the Russians
and Chinese trade at Kiachta: but then when the τroλιr has grown up,
the αγopα is in its centre, not in its suburbs.

VOL. I.                                       E

<<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   >>

More intriguing information