places. At such times it was determined by lot which of the young men were to emigrate. Of their colonies some were in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Isles, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the British Isles." Danish writers say part of Britain which had been colonized by Frode I. in the first century threw off its allegiance after the death of Frode III. in 348, but it was again conquered. Roe, son of Halfdan III., who built the famous city of Roskilde, gave up his continental inheritance to his brother Helge, about 560, for the Danish kingdom of Northumberland, which he preferred for his residence, and conquered several neighbouring provinces. Between these two last dates, at least six separate invasions and settlements by the neighbouring people called Anglo-Saxons are mentioned in English annals. Roe was succeeded by Ivar Vidfadme in 588. This king, who died 647, conquered still more of England. Harald Heldetand, who succeeded Ivar as king of Denmark and Sweden with their colonies, overran more of Britain. His naval resources are represented as immense, his "fleets covering the Sound from shore to shore." He was killed at the great battle of Bravalla in 735, fighting against his nephew Sigurd Ring, who had present at the engagement 2,500 ships. Harald's army included thirty thousand nobles, besides the soldiers and seamen and all the court poets. Sigurd reigned from 735 to 750, and regained Northumberland, which had taken occasion from the absence of a Danish army to assert its independence. After his death it again revolted, allying itself with the Anglo-Saxon king Ella, while Sigurd's successor, the famous Ragnar Lodbrok, was occupied with his invasions of Saxony, Russia, and Turkey. Returning from these, Ragnar advanced through Ireland and Scotland, and along the east coast of England, where, having landed part of his troops, he fought a battle with Ella in 794, was made prisoner, and soon after died.

About this time Ireland, according to her own annalists, was "completely subject to the Danes and Norwegians, who had spread themselves over all the country and built karrs and castles, appointed a king in every district, a jail in every community, a priest in every church, a magistrate in every town, a soldier in every house."

Returning to Scandinavian authorities, Sigur Snogoje, son of Ragnar, led an army into England to revenge his father's defeat and death, and routed entirely the Anglo-Saxons in the battle of York. His army advanced as far as the mouth of the Thames. Northum berland and the other provinces north of the Humber and the Mersey

became exclusively Danish territory. Sigur was killed in a battle with the Franks in 803.

Harald Harfager, King of Norway from 863 to 934, rose to great power, and superseded the Danes in command of many of their colonies. He took possession of the Scottish Isles and all Scotland north of the Grampians, also of parts of the Danish possessions in Ireland, appointing in both countries Jarls to manage and pay tribute to the Norwegian Crown, with feudal rights depending on it. His armies also conquered parts of France, afterwards called Normandy. Harald's son Erik succeeded, and was received as king also of Northumberland, then said to be peopled by Danes, who not being satisfied with him, after some years expelled him. He was killed at a battle in 940, and was succeeded by Hakon the Good, so called because he endeavoured to convert his subjects to Christianity. He gained a battle against the Danes in England, established telegraph beacon stations along the coast, and fell in battle against rebels in 963.

Harald Blatand of Denmark reigned from 941 to 991. His fleet assisted the Normans of France in 944 against Louis D'Outremer, off Cherbourg, when Louis was made prisoner, and renounced his pretensions to Normandy. In 981 his son Svend landed an army at Southampton, and overran and ravaged the country from the Thames to the Mersey. In 995 a fleet of Danes and Norwegians landed in the Humber, and wasted the country thence as far as Kent and Hampshire, when a permanent tax was imposed on all England under the name of Danegelt. For enforcing it the Danes made frequent depredations. A massacre of some of their number in 1002 excited their vengeance, in consequence of which they took London and compelled the English chiefs there to swear allegiance to Svend as their lawful sovereign. He died at Gainsborough in 1014. Knut (Canute) succeeded, and was proclaimed King of England by the Anglo-Saxon thanes immediately after the death of his father. His history is so well known that it need not be followed. He died in 1035, leaving to his son, Horde Knut, the crowns of England and Denmark.

Regarding Scotland about this period the Norse Sagas say Hako Jarl (called the bad), was severe in exacting tribute from the Scottish Isles, 977 to 995, and Olaf Tryggvesson pursued the course of a pirate and freebooter on the coasts of Scotland, England, Ireland, the Hebrides, Isle of Man, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Wales, and also on the coasts of France, between 980 and 1000.

The Norsemen and Danes are stated to have firmly established themselves north of the Grampians in Scotland, and to have had their chief seats of government for that province in the district which they called Morhofi or Moray. In Svend Knutson's reign, between 1030 and 1035, they sent a strong fleet up the Forth, wasted Fife, advanced to Perth where they were routed by Banquo and Macbeth, while part of their fleet was wrecked at St. Andrews, and some of their party put to the sword near Kinghorn. It may only be further noted as to this branch of the subject, that the Shetlands, Orkneys, and Hebrides, continued subject to the Norsemen until 1468, but the inhabitants were nearly all Norse or Danes, and were governed by Danish laws until 1650.

Having come to the period of Canute of England we can pause in historical narrative and arrange materials now within reach for examining the then existing dialects of North-western Europe, comparing them with each other, and with the dialects now in use. The early Anglo-Saxon records are so well known that time need not here be spent upon them. Those of the early Gothic are exceedingly interesting, because they shew us not only that more than a thousand years have passed without making any material alteration on the dialects of the German nations, but that those dialects were, and have always been, wonderfully akin to each other and to those spoken in the plains of Britain. If one will give himself the trouble to study carefully the translation of the Gospels by Ulfilas into the language of the West Goths, ascertained to have been written in the fourth century, he will have little difficulty in making out the Anglo-Saxon chronicles of the fifth, and down to the tenth century, and the Heliad. If he takes up the German writings of the fourth and fifth century, as the Sage von Sigfried dem Drachentödter, the Sage von Reinhart dem Fuchs, the Lied von Hildebrand und Hadubrand, the Geschichte von Walther von Aquitanien (in which Attila is mentioned) or the poem of Beovulf, King of the Jutes, he will see how extensive in its area was the old language of the Germans, and how nearly identical it was with the oldest Anglo-Saxon. If he comes on to the first classical period of German poetry and takes up the Nibelungenlied, which was a number of separate Lieder, partly composed in the fifth century, united about 1170, and committed to writing in 1210, relating to personages who lived between 451 and 500, or the Sage von Ecken Ausfahrt, or König Laurin, both known to have existed in writing in

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the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he will mark the slight differences between them in manner and matter with the contemporaneous writings in England. The Sage vom König Artus, the Parcival Sage, the Titurel Sage, Lohengrin, and Tristram und Isolt, all relating to Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, and written in the thirteenth century, might have been read in England as in Germany in those days. Erik and Iwein, by Hartman von der Aue, written between 1180 and 1190, and completed 1204, and the numerous ballads, legends, and poetical tales, together with the fables and Minnegesang of the thirteenth century, present pictures of society exactly like what we know to have existed in England at and prior to the Norman Conquest and which were but slightly modified in the following century by the effects of that revolution.

If we now turn to the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian Sagas, written prior to the twelfth century, we find them all to be nothing else than dialects of the old German. In so far as we have the means of judging by comparing them with the earliest writings in Scotland, we see those Sagas are more akin to the dialects and manners of the Scottish Lowlands than of the English southern districts; and, if we can forbear attaching importance to small differences and make reasonable allowance for distance of time, we may, without violent straining of probabilities, come to be satisfied-indeed, we can hardly avoid concluding-that the old dialects of Scandinavia were so nearly the old dialects of the Scottish Lowlands, that the two peoples must have easily understood each other.

While we have seen that the Teutonic or old German language was so extensively in use throughout the broad surface of Europe, we fail to trace the Celtic language, from the total absence of authentic written documents sufficiently bearing upon it. We find at the present day the language of Germany, in various dialects, remaining where it prevailed about the beginning of our era, and we observe it extending over other and distant continents. But we hardly know now where to find a few hundred people living together and using Celtic dialects. We begin to doubt if it ever had any very extensive use. We have been broadly assured by various writers that it was once the most prevalent language of the European Continent, and that all over Britain and Ireland it was universally spoken. But they have shewn us no reliable evidence of this. They have only pointed to words, and we have examined these and found them either uncertain in their parentage, or of another family. The

Teutonic dialects and the Celtic dialects have a certain affinity, and they have many radical words which are the same, or nearly the same; yet they differ on the whole so widely that they can readily be distinguished by the student. The difference may be compared to Roman and Gothic architecture. They may be seen passing into each other, but no architect mistakes the (to him) broadly marked separate characters. On the Continent almost incessant wars have raged and caused changes and fusions. In Spain mixed language has been ever the rule, and one element has alternately with another become predominant. Italy has received into its old stock various new modifying elements. France has formed a new language out of the old Roman, the Celtic, and the Teutonic dialects. England has received into its German stock a little of all the languages its trading community has come into contact with, and it has disguised some of the vowel sounds by a strange whim of fashion. Germany has been truest to itself, as having changed the least. In respect of the Celtic, we can only assume that probably it has remained as long, or perhaps longer, unchanged; for circumstances favour the assumption in so far as our information extends. In our own country, until towards the beginning of the present century, the Celtic people seldom approached the Lowlanders unless for plunder or war, and they always returned into their mountain fastnesses as quickly as they came down from them. There was nothing to tempt the Lowlanders into the Celtic district, unless the recovery of booty or the gratification of revenge. Partial intercourse of a peaceful kind, and intermixture of the races, near the borders and in the smaller islands, would naturally occur at all times; but, in a broad view, the rule has been that, mutually regarding each other with dislike as foreigners, there was little intercourse.

Theories as to the time when first the Celtic language was introduced into the island are as vain as those relating to the introduction of the Teutonic. Conjectures only can have place, but these, if ventured, should be in accordance with recognised history, and not opposed to tradition where reasonable and fairly attested. We may suppose that, from the proximity of France to England, emigration in very early times took place, and that, their numbers being few, the strangers found it necessary to confine themselves to the mountainous districts of the west coast. We may suppose that parts of Ireland were in like manner peopled by Celts from France. We know that in the first four centuries the Romans did not remark their