of the atmosphere. Death also attacking such beasts as go thither, forthwith destroys them. But as I have arrived at this point of my history, it is incumbent on me to record a tradition very nearly allied to fable, which has never appeared to me true in all respects, though constantly spread abroad by men without number, who assert that themselves have been agents in the transactions, and also hearers of the words. I must not, however, pass it by altogether unnoticed, lest when thus writing concerning the island of Brittia I should bring upon myself an imputation of ignorance of certain circumstances perpetually happening there.

"They say then that the souls of men departed are always conducted to this place; but in what manner I will explain immediately, having frequently heard it from men of that region relating it most seriously, although I would rather ascribe their asseverations to a certain dreamy faculty which possesses them. On the coast of the land over against this island Brittia, in the ocean, are many villages, inhabited by men employed in fishing and in agriculture; who for the sake of merchandize pass over to this island. In other respects they are subject to the Franks, but they never render them tribute; this burden, as they relate, having been of old remitted to them for a certain service, which I shall immediately describe. The inhabitants declare that the conducting of souls devolves on them in turn. Such of them, therefore, as on the ensuing night are to go on this occupation in their turn of service, retiring to their dwellings as soon as it grows dark, compose themselves to sleep, awaiting the conductor of the expedition. All at once, at night, they perceive that their doors are shaken, and they hear a certain indistinct voice summoning them to their work. Without delay arising from their beds they proceed to the shore, not under

standing the necessity which thus constrains them, yet nevertheless compelled by its influence. And here they perceive vessels in readiness, wholly void of men, not, however, their own, but certain strange vessels, in which embarking they lay hold on the oars, and feel their burden made heavier by a multitude of passengers, the boats being sunk to the gunwale and rowlock, and floating scarce a finger above the water. They see not a single person, but having rowed for one hour only, they arrive at Brittia: whereas when they navigate their own vessels, not making use of sails, but rowing, they arrive there with difficulty even in a night and a day. Having reached the island and been released from their burden, they depart immediately, the boats quickly becoming light, suddenly emerging from the stream, and sinking in the water no deeper than the keel. These people see no human being, either while navigating with them, nor when released from the ship. But they say that they hear a certain voice there, which seems to announce to such as receive them the names of all who have crossed over with them, describing the dignities which they formerly possessed, and calling them over by their hereditary titles. And also if women happen to cross over with them, they call over the names of the husbands with whom they lived.'

In spite of the historian's distinction in this passage of Brittia and Britain, he afterwards mentions many circumstances which shew conclusively they are in reality one and the same, and that it is Britain which he speaks of, as the place of disembodied spirits.

THE original country of the Saxons cannot be regarded as fully ascertained. A tale accepted as authentic by Witikind of Corbie, in the tenth century, represents them as arriving in ships, and settling themselves by force among the Thuringians, in the time of the emperor Vespasian, and from the idolatrous estimation in which they are known to have held the war-horse, it has been conjectured that they probably came from the country eastward of the Baltic, that form of paganism prevailing in those regions even to comparatively recent times. The first direct mention of them, however, is that by Ptolemy, who, before the close of the second century, speaks of the tribes on the shore and the islands at the mouth of the Elbe, as Saxons, and pirates.

Of the form of government prevailing at that time among them, we know little more than that, as with other barbarous nations, it was based on their idolatry. Their chiefs claimed descent from Woden, the god of war, and they had many other deities, the names of some of whom are still preserved in our English tongue, little altered, in those of the days of the week. War being the only honourable occupation, each chief habitually set forth to plunder the richer nations which had fallen under the Roman sway; and although when they first appeared on the coasts of the provinces their vessels were mere boats, and their arms were rude and scanty

A chief of priestly as well as warlike character, | styled Sigge Fridulfsen, came from the region near the Caspian sea into the north of Europe, probably not long before the Christian era. The Northern

in supply, their daring courage compensated these disadvantages.

Each chief appears to have been wholly independent, acknowledging no superior, but we may fairly conclude from what is recorded of other nations, that confederacies were formed among them under some distinguished leader when any rich prize was in prospect; and thus, and by the junction of other tribes whom the Romans had not been able fully to subdue, as well as by actual colonization in many quarters, the Saxons so extended themselves that their name became, before the close of the third century, a general one for the sea rovers of the North, without implying any national affinity, being, according to one theory, derived from the long knife ("seax") which at first formed their principal weapon. Soon, however, either from the spoils of the vanquished or their own industry, or both, they were provided also with long spears and ponderous battle-axes, and their vessels, now denominated chiules, or war-ships, were of sufficient size to convey a body of several hundred men each. Such a number of hardy pirates suddenly landing in countries disarmed by the jealous policy of their rulers, had little to fear from the comparatively unwarlike provincials, and what had been at first a mere plundering incursion often gave birth to a fixed settlement, which steadily grew in importance as the Roman power declined; and it is the opinion of many writers that scat

Sagas describe him as the wisest and best of men, and he was after death confounded with their deity by the rude natives, grateful for some degree of civilization imparted

There is abundant evidence that these people rapidly extended themselves along the coast of the German ocean as far as the Rhine, and before the year 300 their ravages had become so frequent and so formidable that the whole district from the Elbe to the British channel was known as the Saxon Shore, and officers were_appointed both in Britain and in Gaul to whom the task of guarding the seaboard of the Roman possessions was assigned. One of the earliest of these maritime prefects (who afterwards bore the title of Counts of the Sea Shore or Saxon Shore) was Carausius, who took advantage of the fleet entrusted to him for the purpose of his office to establish himself as an independent ruler in Britain".

Meantime the Saxons pursued their ravages with little check, and spread such terror of their name that the emperor Julian and the historian Procopius, equally with Ammianus Marcellinus and Zosimus, speak of them as more fierce and formidable than any other of the barbarous nations. By land as well as by sea they appeared irresistible. When they had ravaged the coast, they ascended the rivers; when their chiules, or their smaller vessels, could penetrate no farther, they were abandoned, and the rovers, seizing on such horses as they could find, pushed fearlessly into the interior, as a mixed force of horse and foot, and wasted with fire and sword every district they approached, until at length some river was reached, descending which with such rude barks as they could hastily construct, they again launched on the ocean, to pursue another career of devastation.

"We have not," says Sidonius Apollinaris, a Gaulish bishop of the fifth century, "a more cruel and more dangerous enemy than the Saxons: they overcome all who have the courage to oppose them; they surprise all who are so imprudent as not to be prepared for their attack. When they pursue,

b See A.D. 286.

Sigge, or Woden, their great exemplar, was

are pursued, their escape is certain. They despise danger; they are inured to shipwreck; they are eager to purchase booty with the peril of their lives. Tempests, which to others are so dreadful, to them are subjects of joy; the storm is their protection when they are pressed by the enemy, and a cover for their operations when they meditate an attack. Before they quit their own shores, they devote to the altars of their gods the tenth part of the principal captives; and when they are on the point of returning, the lots are cast with an affectation of equity, and the impious vow is fulfilled."

This picture, in which fear and hatred are alike apparent, might be suspected of exaggeration, but its main features are fully justified by the whole tenor of the Icelandic Sagas, the earliest accounts on the side of the ravagers that have come down to us; for though immediately relating to the Northmen of the eighth and succeeding centuries, no reasonable doubt can be entertained that they are also fairly applicable to their Saxon precursors. In these writings we find it constantly affirmed, that "the gods are with the strongest ;" that human sacrifices are absolutely necessary to gain and preserve their favour; that war is the only fitting occupation of free men; and that the only desirable death is that on the field of battle, or its substitute suicide. Those who fell by the sword were thus marked out as the especial favourites of their fierce divinities, and were alone admitted to the hall of Woden (Valhalla), where their time passed in alternate fighting and feasting; whilst for cowards (for such seem to have existed among them) and those who died a natural death, were reserved all the pains of Niflheim (literally, Evil Home), a shadowy region of torment.

Men holding such ideas would naturally be at least as regardless of the lives of others as of their own, and being also, after their barbarous fashion, devout, they thought they did their gods service by wreaking especial vengeance on the most sacred objects of the Christian communities that they

supposed to have killed himself when he found the infirmities of age coming on.

invaded. Hence the destruction of churches and murder of priests which the Saxon Chronicle relates as part of every ravage committed by the Northmen, and which had been before practised by the Saxons themselves, as Gildas informs us, whose testimony may in this case well be believed, for if they had not been actuated by a fierce hatred of Christianity, their reception of its saving doctrines, we may presume, would not have been so long delayed as it actually was.

Yet these people had even in their rudest state qualities which shew that

they deserve a more favourable judgment than is often formed of them. Their free spirit, their active, adventurous character, the lofty sense of personal honour shewn in their earliest codes of laws, and above all, that base of true civilization, their high estimate of woman, are noble features in themselves, but doubly interesting to us as shewing that our country owes her proud place among the nations mainly to the development of the feelings, the principles, and the institutes of our Saxon forefathers.

WHEN the acquisitions of the AngloSaxon invaders assumed something of a settled form, they are found to bear the following relation to the old Roman provinces.

The Jutish kingdom of Kent, and the South Saxon kingdom, may be represented by the modern counties of Kent, Surrey and Sussex; while Wessex occupied the remainder of the tract between the Channel and the Thames (Britannia Prima), having, however, for a very long period an unconquered British population beyond the Tamar (the West-Welsh).

Immediately north-east of the Thames lay the small East Saxon state (Essex), but the Anglian kingdoms occupied the rest of the east coast and

the interior (Flavia Cæsariensis), the East Angles holding Suffolk and Norfolk, the Mid Angles or Mercians extending from the Thames to the Humber, and from the fen districts to the Severn; while the two Northumbrian kingdoms (also Anglian) occupied Maxima Cæsariensis and Valentia, or North England and South Scotland, but were bounded by independent British tribes in Cumberland and Strathclyde.

Westward of Mercia extended Wales (Britannia Secunda), divided into many small states, the independence of a part of which survived for more than 200 years the overthrow of the Saxon power.