parcelled out in the same way between the descendants of the English king. Ethelwolf was the counterpart of Louis, and carried the sceptre in too gentle a hand. He still further diminished his authority by yielding to the dissensions of his court. Like the Frankish ruler, also, he left portions of his territory to his four sons; of whom it will be sufficient for us to remember that the youngest was the great Alfred-the foremost name in all medieval history; and by an injudicious marriage with the daughter of Charles the Bald, and his unjust divorce of the mother of all his sons, he offended the feelings of the nation, and raised the animosity of his children. Ethelbald his son completed the popular discontent by marrying his father's widow, the French princess, who had been the cause of so much disagreement; and while the people were thus alienated, and the guiding hand of a true ruler of men was withdrawn, the terrible invasion of Danes and Jutlanders went on. They sailed up the Thames and pillaged London. Winchester was given to the flames. The whole isle of Thanet was seized and permanently occupied. The magic standard, a raven, embroidered by the daughters of the famous Regner Lodbrog, (who had been stung to death by serpents in a dungeon into which he was thrown by Ella, King of Northumberland.) was carried from point to point, and was thought to be the symbol of victory and revenge. The offending Northumbrian now felt the wrath of the sons of Lodbrog. They landed with a great army, and after a battle, in which the chiefs of the English were slain, took the Northumbrian kingdom. Nottingham was soon after captured and destroyed. It was no longer a mere incursion. The nobles and great families of Denmark came over to their new conquest, and stationed themselves in strong fortresses, commanding large cir A.D. 839. A.D. 860. ALFRED AND THE DANES. 215 cles of country, and lived under their Danish regulations. The land, to be sure, was not populous at that time, and probably the Danish settlements were accomplished without the removal of any original occupiers. But the castles they built, and the towns which rapidly grew around them, acted as outposts against the remaining British kingdoms; and at last, when fleet after fleet disembarked their thousands of warlike colonists -when Leicester, Lincoln, Stamford, York, and Chester, were all in Danish hands, and stretched a line of intrenchments round the lands they considered their own-the divided Anglo-Saxons were glad to purchase a cessation of hostilities by guaranteeing to them forever the places and territories they had secured. And there was now a Danish kingdom enclosed by the fragments of the English empire; there were Danish laws and customs, a Danish mode of pronunciation, and for a good while a still broader gulf of demarcation established between the peoples by their diversity in religious faith. But when Alfred attained the supreme power and although respecting the treaties between the Danes and English, yet evidently able to defend his countrymen from the aggressions of their foreign neighbour-the pacified pirate, tired of the sea, and softened by the richer soil and milder climate of his new home, began to perceive the very unsatisfactory nature of his ancient belief, and rapidly gave his adhesion to the lessons of the gospel. Guthrum, the Danish chieftain, became a zealous Christian according to his lights, and was baptized with all his subjects. Alfred acted as godfather to the neophyte, and restrained the wildest of his followers within due bounds. Perhaps, even, he was assisted by his Christianized allies in the great and final struggle against Hastings and a new swarm of Scandinavian rovers, whose defeat is the concluding act of this A.D. 872. tumultuous century. Alfred drew up near London, and met the advancing hosts on the banks of the river Lea, about twenty miles from town. The patient angler in that suburban river seldom thinks what great events occurred upon its shore. Great ships-all things are comparative-were floating upon its waters, filled with armed Danes. Alfred cut certain openings in the banks and lowered the stream, so that the hostile navy stranded. Out sprang the Danes, astonished at the interruption to their course, and retreated across the country, nor stopped till they had placed themselves in inaccessible positions on the Severn. But the century came to a close. Opening with the great days of Charlemagne, it is right that it should close with the far more glorious reign of Alfred the patriot and sage;-a century illuminated at its two extremes, but in its middle period dark with disunion and ignorance, and not unlikely, unless controlled to higher uses, to give birth to a state of more hopeless barbarism than that from which the nations of Europe had so recently emerged. |