life has at last to embank itself into muddy agriculture, and in bleak-flying sea mist, forget the sunshine on its basalt crags.
27. Whereupon, we must also pause, to embank ourselves somewhat; and before other things, try what we can understand in this name of Frank, concerning which Gibbon tells us, in his sweetest tones of satisfied moral serenity—"The love of liberty was the ruling passion of these Germans. They deserved, they assumed, they maintained, the honourable epithet of Franks, or Freemen." He does not, however, tell us in what language of the time—Chaucian, Sicambrian, Chamavian, or Cattian,—'Frank' ever meant Free: nor can I find out myself what tongue of any time it first belongs to; but I doubt not that Miss Yonge ('History of Christian Names,' Articles on Frey and Frank), gives the true root, in what she calls the High German "Frang," Free Lord. Not by any means a Free Commoner, or anything of the sort! but a person whose nature and name implied the existence around him, and beneath, of a considerable number of other persons who were by no means 'Frang,' nor Frangs. His title is one of the proudest then maintainable;—ratified at last by the dignity of age added to that of valour, into the Seigneur, or Monseigneur, not even yet in the last cockney
