[Footnote: _Opp._ vol. vi. pt. 2. p. 20.] Of all the thousands
of Englishmen who are aware that Angles and Saxons established
themselves in this island, and that we are in the main descended from
them, it would be curious to know how many have realized to themselves
a fact so obvious as that this 'England' means 'Angle-land,' or that in
the names 'Essex,' 'Sussex,' and 'Middlesex,' we preserve a record of
East Saxons, South Saxons, and Middle Saxons, who occupied those
several portions of the land; or that 'Norfolk' and 'Suffolk' are two
broad divisions of 'northern' and 'southern folk,' into which the East
Anglian kingdom was divided. 'Cornwall' does not bear its origin quite
so plainly upon its front, or tell its story so that every one who runs
may read. At the same time its secret is not hard to attain to. As the
Teutonic immigrants advanced, such of the British population as were
not either destroyed or absorbed by them retreated, as we all have
learned, into Wales and Cornwall, that is, till they could retreat no
further. The fact is evidently preserved in the name of 'Wales', which
means properly 'The foreigners,'--the nations of Teutonic blood calling
all bordering tribes by this name. But though not quite so apparent on
the surface, this fact is also preserved in 'Cornwall', written
formerly 'Cornwales', or the land inhabited by the Welsh of the Corn or
Horn. The chroniclers uniformly speak of North Wales and Corn-Wales.
[Footnote: See _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_, year 997, where mention is made
of the _Cornwealas_, the Cornish people.
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