excesses of the invasion by the ruder race were past, these sources of union divested it of half its evil consequences, and tended to gradual and complete fusion of the whole population into one great united nation. The antipathy of race did not long continue, as it did in France between the German Franks and the Romanized Gauls. There, as Thierry and other historical writers remark, the conquering race took possession of Gaul, without exterminating the conquered, but also without amalgamating with them. There were two nations-two hostile camps-on one soil. Diversity of origin, of language, of manners, and of laws, created a hostile spirit in the mingled population: and the traces of this antagonism were never, perhaps, entirely effaced,-whatever may have been the physical mixture between the two racesuntil the terrible revolution which sweeping away all former landmarks reduced the two distinct portions of the population to one common level. Happily for our own constitutional liberties and social advancement, no such distinctions long prevailed in England. Our Alfred wisely planted the first settled colony of the Danes, and he granted them equal rights with his native subjects. For many generations there was a contest for the ascendancy between the two races; but neither enslaved the other. Equality of rights in the eye of the law became the birth right of all who occupied the soil of England; and AngloSaxon and Anglo-Dane, already approximated by kindred ties, became indissolubly united in contending together for the glorious privilege which was consecrated equally by the traditions of both races.

The researches through which the reader has now accompanied us, have exhibited the Danish and Norwegian invaders of England, in and about the time of Alfred the great, under a very different aspect from that which is presented from the single point of view generally taken of them, from whence they are regarded as hordes of ferocious and uncivilized barbarians, who, with the change of their religion, acquired the first elements of civilization by their connection with the Anglo-Saxons. It cannot have failed to occur to the reader that it must have been an extraordinary cultivation, bearing fruits as rapidly as those that ripen in a northern summer, which could have transformed the piratical vikings and their

followers, being such as they are represented, in the short space of half a century from the time of Alfred, into skilful moneyers, and accomplished dignitaries, filling the highest offices in the Anglo-Saxon church.

Some allowance may doubtless be made for exaggerations occasioned by the terror and alarm which visitations so tremendous must have inspired in the minds of an unwarlike and defenceless people on whom the onset of these inroads fell, and of the secluded and peaceful men by whom they are described. It is also to be observed that the Saxon Chronicle contains much fewer accounts of the pagan barbarities than later and less authentic records. Independently of this however, had the strength of the native population been prepared to stand the brunt of such attacks, and to protect the helpless, their hearths, their families and their substance from the violence of the marauders by their valour and organization, though the slaughter in battle might have been great, we should have had less fearful records of wholesale massacre, destruction and pillage. But has not war been often waged by highly civilized nations with a severity equal to that of the Northmen who devastated the coasts and the river banks of England and France? Do we suppose that the Romans were less sparing of fire and sword, when they invaded and subjugated Britain? History gives very terrible accounts of their dealings with the wretched inhabitants who were crushed by their power. It tells us also that in all ages the most polished nations have relentlessly pursued, even to extermination, the native races whose territories have become the objects of their cupidity or ambition. Even in our own times, the razzias of two of the most civilized nations of Europe on the frontiers of their colonies in northern and southern Africa-the indiscriminate destruction of villages, substance and crops, and the spoliation of cattle-have not been less fraught with misery and ruin to the innocent and unoffending, less calculated to inspire terror, and, excepting promiscuous slaughter of women and children, not less revolting to every feeling of humanity than the forays of the Scandinavian pirates in a ruder age.

The truth is, there is nothing incompatible in the accounts with which we are furnished of the cruelties of the piratical Danes, on the one hand, and those which describe them as living under

regular laws and institutions, addicted to commerce, and instructed in many of the useful arts of industry, on the other. We all know how among barbarous nations, the passions are roused by the excitement of war and rapine. Life-whether their own or their enemies, is held cheap; expeditions for the purpose of plunder are held to be most honourable exploits, and they are unscrupulous as to the horrors attending them. The character of the northern tribes was unusually bold, enterprising and ruthless. They felt a stern delight in braving the storms of a tempestuous ocean, and the perils of descents on unknown and hostile shores. The foray ended, the parties engaged in it returned to their homes and peaceful occupations. They were owners and occupiers of land as well as sailors and warriors. In their maritime adventures, the same men were often alternately merchants and pirates.

The first incursions on the coast of England were probably planned and undertaken by some of the boldest and fiercest spirits of the north. Plunder was their sole object, and after a successful inroad they loaded their ships with booty, and the close of summer was the signal for their voyage homeward. The expeditions of these marauders prepared the way for other classes of adventurers. They were led by chiefs of the highest rank and included vast numbers of the free Udallers, the very pith and marrow of the population. These were not merely actuated by the love of plunder, but they fled from the encroachments of a tyrannical power unknown to their fathers to seek for freedom and independence in a foreign land. They were colonists in the proper sense of the word. They sought a country, more fertile than their own, where they might establish communities living under their own cherished laws, and practise in freedom the arts which were necessary to their subsistence; but they were prepared to carve out their new inheritance with their swords. Such, we believe, were, in large proportion, the men who in the ninth and tenth centuries invaded, conquered and settled large districts of Anglo-Saxon England-the men who founded the Norman chivalry and the Norman architecture. Ruthless as were the contests which preceded and accompanied their first regular immigration, such a class of free and independent settlers could not but eventually add to the strength and resources of the people among

whom they mingled. They brought with them not only an aptitude for civilization, but many of its elements; they have left to posterity indelible traces of their free spirit, their intelligence and their industry which it has been our business to follow. It cannot be thought, that the same men who in the century of Alfred the Great, colonized Iceland, founding there a free republic with wise laws and institutions, who thence prosecuted further important discoveries, and who made that northern isle a school from which the Scalds and Saga-writers sent forth a body of popular literature unrivalled by any nation of that or succeeding ages, that the fellows of such men in the same century brought to England only their swords and their battle axes-brute strength and unmitigated barbarism.

XIII.

GRIMBALD'S CRYPT.

The church of St Peter's, in the city of Oxford, is one of the oldest in England, and exhibits architectural remains of different ages, of much interest to the antiquary. Beneath it is an old and venerable crypt, commonly called Grimbald's crypt,' supposed to have been built by Grimbald in the reign of King Alfred the Great. Dr Ingram, in his Memorials of Oxford, gives the following account of it.

The Crypt, commonly called Grimbald's Crypt, after all the controversies and criticisms to which the name of Griymbold has given birth, still continues an interesting object of curiosity to antiquaries and architects; nor