where we now trace little but foundations of walls and scattered fragments, there then stood lofty and elegant buildings. Alfred, who at home had lived in wooden houses, and been accustomed to see mud huts with thatched roofs, could hardly fail of being struck with the superior splendour of Rome. The papal court, though as yet modest and unassuming, was regulated with some taste and great order, while the other court at which he resided (the French) was more splendid than any in Europe, with the exception of Constantinople. But whatever effect these scenes may have had from abroad, and such Danes as attacked him from the Danelagh at home. On the services and gratitude of the former he had no claim, but the men of Northumbria, Norfolk, and Sussex had, through their chiefs and princes, sworn allegiance to him, had received benefits from him, and stood bound to the protection of his states, which they were ravaging. From the situation they occupied they could constantly trouble his tranquillity, and in regard to them he may have been led to consider, after the experience he had had of their bad faith, that measures of extreme severity were allowable and indispensable. The two ships cap-in enlarging the mind of Alfred, it should appear tured at the Isle of Wight came from Northumbria, and the twenty ships taken during the three remaining years of his life, and of which the crews were slain or hanged on the gallows, came from the same country, and the other English lands included in the Danelagh. The excursions of Hasting were accompanied with other calamities, "so that," to use the words of the chronicler Fabian, "this land, for three years, was vexed with three manner of sorrows -with war of the Danes, pestilence of men, and murrain of beasts." The horrors of famine, to escape which the Danes had come to England, are not alluded to, but the pestilence, which is mentioned by all the chroniclers, carried off vast numbers. It seems to have continued some time after Hasting's departure, and then, on its cessation, Alfred enjoyed as much comfort as his rapidly declining health would permit. Before we descend to the far inferior reigns of his successors, we must select from his biographers a few personal details, and cull a few of those flowers which adorned the great Alfred's reign, and which still give it a beauty and an interest we look for in vain elsewhere during those barbarous ages. Historians have generally attached great consequences to his travels on the Continent through France and Italy; and, mere child as he was, it is not improbable that Alfred's mind received impressions in those countries that were afterwards of benefit to himself and his kingdom. On the first of these journeys to Rome, Alfred was only in his fifth year, but on the second, when he was accompanied by his father, and anointed by the pope, he was eight years old. On this last occasion he staid nearly a year at Rome, and returning thence through France, he resided some time at Paris. The Eternal City, though despoiled by the barbarians, and not yet enriched with the works of modern art, must have retained much of its ancient splendour; the Coliseum, and many other edifices that remain, are known to have been much more perfect in the days of Alfred than they are now; the proud Capitol was comparatively entire, and in various parts of the city, he had not yet learned to read-an accomplishment, by the way, not then very common, even among princes and nobles of a more advanced age. He, however, delighted in listening to the Anglo-Saxon ballads and songs, which were constantly recited by the minstrels and gleemen attached to his father's court. From frequent vocal repetition, to which he listened day and night,' he learned them by heart; and the taste he thus acquired for poetry lasted him, through many cares and sorrows, to the last day of his life. The story told by Asser is well known. One day his mother, Osburgha, was sitting, surrounded by her children, with a book of Saxon poetry in her hands. The precious MS. was gilded or illuminated, and the contents were probably new, and much to the taste of the boys. "I will give it," said she, "to him among you who shall first learn to read it." Alfred, the youngest of them all, ran to a teacher, and studying earnestly, soon learned to read Anglo-Saxon, and won the book. But, with the exception of popular poetry, AngloSaxon was the key to only a small portion of the literature or knowledge of the times; and as his curiosity and intellect increased, it became necessary for him to learn Latin. At a subsequent period of his life Alfred possessed a knowledge of that learned language, which was altogether extraordinary for a prince of the ninth century. It is not very clear when he obtained this degree of knowledge, but after teaching himself by translating, he was probably greatly improved in his mature manhood, when the monk Asser, Johannes Erigena, Grimbald, and other learned men, settled at his court. Alfred was accustomed to say that he regretted the neglected education of his youth, the entire want of proper teachers, and also the difficulties that then barred his progress to intellectual acquirements, much more than all the hardships, and sorrows, and crosses that befell him afterwards. As one of his great impediments had been the Latin language, which, even with our improved system of tuition, and with all our facilities and advantages, is not mastered without 1 Asser, 16 It long and difficult study, he earnestly recom- SAXON LANTERN.-From Strutt's Chronicle of England. and doors, and the numerous chinks in the walls of the palace, consumed the wax in a rapid and irregular manner. Hence Asser makes the great Alfred the inventor of horn lanterns! He says the king went skilfully and wisely to work; and having found out that white horn could be rendered transparent like glass, he, with that material, and with pieces of wood, admirably (mirabiliter) made a case for his candle, which kept it from wasting and flaring. In his youth Alfred was passionately fond of field sports, and was famed as being "excellent cunning in all hunting;" but after his retreat at Athelney he indulged this taste with becoming moderation; and during the latter years of his reign he seems to have ridden merely upon business, or for the sake of his health. He then considered every moment of value, as he could devote it to lofty and improving purposes. We have already mentioned the care and ingenuity he employed in creating a navy. Sea affairs, geography, and the discovery of unknown countries, or rather the descriptions of countries then little known, obtained by means of bold navigators, occupied much of his time, and formed one of his favourite subjects for writing. He endeavoured, by liberality and kindness, to attract to England all such foreigners as could give good information on these subjects, or were otherwise qualified to illuminate the national ignorance. From Audher, or Ohthere, who had coasted the continent of Europe from the Baltic to the North Cape, he obtained much information; from Wulfstan, who appears to have been one of his subjects, and who undertook a voyage round the Baltic, he gathered many particulars concerning the diverse countries situated on that sea; and from other voyagers and travellers whom he sent out expressly himself, he obtained a description of Bulgaria, Sclavonia, Bohemia, and Germany. All this information he committed to writing in the plain mother tongue, and with the noble design of imparting it to his people. Having learned that there were colonies of Christian Syrians settled on the coasts of Malabar and Coromandel, he sent out Swithelm, Bishop of Sherburn, to India-a tremendous journey in those days. The stout-hearted ecclesiastic, however, making what is now called the overland journey, went and returned in safety, bringing back with him presents of gems and Indian spices. Hereby was Alfred's fame increased, and the name and existence of England probably heard of for the first time in that remote country, of which, nine centuries after, she was to become the almost absolute mistress.' It appears that these time-candles were placed 1 For further details relating to the commerce of this and subsequent periods, we refer the reader to History of British Com to qualify themselves for the proper discharge of their office before they ventured to grasp its honours and emoluments. He heard all appeals with the utmost patience, and, in cases of importance, revised all the law proceedings with the utmost industry. His manifold labours in the court, the camp, the field, the hall of justice, the study, must have been prodigious; and our admiration of this wonderful man is increased by the well-established fact, that all these exertions were made in spite of the depressing influences of physical pain and constant bad health. In his early years he was severely afflicted by the disease called the ficus. This left him; but, at the age of twenty or twenty-one, it was replaced by another and still more tormenting malady, the inward seat and unknown mysterious nature of which baffled all the medical skill of his "leeches." The accesses of excruciating pain were frequent at times almost unintermittent; and then if, by day or by night, a single hour of ease was mercifully granted him, that short in While his active mind, which anticipated the reprimanded and suspended, commanding them national spirit of much later times, was thus engaged in drawing knowledge from the distant corners of the earth, he did not neglect home affairs. He taught the people how to build better houses; he laboured to increase their comforts; he established schools; he founded or rebuilt many towns; and having learned the importance of fortifications during his wars with the Danes, he fortified them all as well as he could. He caused a survey to be made of the coast and navigable rivers, and ordered castles to be erected at those places which were most accessible to the landing of the enemy. Fifty strong towers and castles rose in different parts of the country, but the number would have been threefold had Alfred not been thwarted by the indolence, ignorance, and carelessness of his nobles and people. He revised the laws of the Anglo-Saxons, being aided and sanctioned therein by his witenagemot or parliament; and he established so excellent a system of police, that towards the end of his reign it was generally asserted that one might have hung golden bracelets and jewels on the pub-terval was imbittered by the dread of the sure lic highways and cross-roads, and no man would have dared to touch them, for fear of the law. ALFRED'S JEWEL.-Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Towards arbitrary, unjust, or corrupt administrators of the law, he was inexorable; and, if we can give credit to an old writer," he ordered the execution of no fewer than forty-four judges and magistrates of this stamp in the course of one year. Those who were ignorant or careless he This highly interesting relic, an ornament of gold, seemingly intended to be hung round the neck, was found near Athelney, in Somersetshire, the very place of Alfred's retreat and deliver ance from the Danes. The jewel contains an effigy, conjectured to be that of St. Cuthbert, enamelled on gold, surrounded by the following inscription, which identifies it with the best of the Saxon kings-AELFRED ME HEAT GEWRCAN (Alfred had me wrought). On the other side is represented a flower. The jewel measures about 3 in. long, and the workmanship of the whole is good. Malmesbury relates that St. Cuthbert appeared to Alfred in a vision at Athelney, and predicted his future triumph over the infidel Danes. 2 Andrew Horne, author of Miroir des Justices, who wrote, in Norman French, under Edward I. or Edward II. returning anguish. This malady never left him till the day of his death, which it must have hastened. He expired in the month of October, six nights before All-Hallows-mass Day, in the year 901, when he was only in the fifty-third year of his age, and was buried at Winchester, in a monastery he had founded. In describing his brilliant and incontestable deeds, and in tracing the character of the great Alfred, we, in common with nearly all the writers who have preceded us in the task, have drawn a general eulogy, and a character nearly approaching to ideal perfection. But were there no spots in all this brilliancy and purity? As Alfred was a mortal man, there were, no doubt, many; but to discover them, we must ransack his private life, and his vaguely reported conduct when a mere stripling king; and the discovery, after all, confers no honour of sagacity, and does not justify the exultation with which a recent writer announces to the world that Alfred had not only faults, but crimes to bemoan. It is passed into a truism that he will seldom be in the wrong who deducts alike from the amount of virtue and vice in the characters recorded in history; but this deduction will be made according to men's tempers; and while some largely reduce the amount of virtue, they seem to leave the vice untouched-their incredulity extending rather to what elevates and ennobles human nature, than to the things which degrade and debase it. The directly contrary course, or that of reducing the crime, and leaving the virtue, if not the more correct (which we will not decide), is certainly 3 Asser. the more generous and improving. Every people above the condition of barbarity have their heroes and their national objects of veneration, and are probably improved by the high standard of excellence they present, and by the very reverence they pay to them. We may venerate the memory of our Alfred with as little danger of paying an unmerited homage as any of them. On this subject the late Sir James Mackintosh, whose historical sagacity was equal to his good feeling, says, “The Norman historians, who seem to have had his diaries and note-books in their hands, chose Alfred as the glory of the land which had become their own. There is no subject on which unanimous tradition is so nearly sufficient evidence as on the eminence of one man over others of the same condition. His bright image may long be held up before the national mind. This tradition, however paradoxical the assertion may appear, is, in the case of Alfred, rather supported than weakened by the fictions which have sprung from it. Although it be an infirmity of every nation to ascribe their institutions to the contrivance of a man, rather than to the slow action of time and circumstances, yet the selection of Alfred by the English people, as the founder of all that was dear to them, is surely the strongest proof of the deep impression, left on the minds of all, of his transcendent wisdom and virtue."1 CHAPTER III-CIVIL AND MILITARY HISTORY. FROM THE ACCESSION OF EDWARD TO THE DEATH OF HARDICANUTE.-A.D. 901-1042. Reign of Edward-Account of his sister, Ethelfleda-Reign of Athelstane-His victory at Brunnaburgh-Reigns of Edmund the Atheling, Edred, and Edwy-Contest of Edwy with Dunstan―Tragical fate of Elgiva, the wife of Edwy-Reign of Edgar-His prosperity-His marriage with Elfrida-Reign of Edward the Martyr-His assassination at Corfe Castle-He is succeeded by Ethelred-Reign of Ethelred, surnamed the Unready-The Danes invade England-Their forbearance purchased with money-Massacre of the Danes in England-Invasion of England by Sweyn, King of Denmark-His invasion repeated-Ethelred's unwise proceedingsInvasion of Thurkill's host-Martyrdom of Alphege by the Danes-Sweyn once more invades England, and is proclaimed king-Ethelred's return to England, and death-Succeeded by Edinund Ironside Canute becomes King of England- Marries the widow of Ethelred-His prosperous reign-His pilgrimage to Rome -His rebuke of the flattery of his courtiers-He is succeeded by his son Harold-Treacherous murder of Edward the son of Ethelred-Harold succeeded by Hardicanute-Death of Hardicanute at a banquet. DWARD. A.D. 901. Alfred, with | weaker, he declined a combat at Wimburn, and all his wisdom and power, had not fled into the Danelagh, where the Danes hailed been enabled to settle the succes- him as their king. Many of the Saxons who sion to the throne on a sure and lived in that country mixed with the Danes, lasting basis. On his death it was preferred war to the restraints of such a governdisputed between his son Edward ment as Alfred had established; and an internal and his nephew Ethelwald, the son of Ethel- war was renewed, which did infinite mischief, bald, one of Alfred's elder brothers. Each party and prepared the way for other horrors. Ethelarmed; but as Ethelwald found himself the wald was slain in a terrible battle fought in 'Hist. Eng. ch. xi. "The qualities of his mind were those of a statesman and a hero, but elevated, and, at the same time, softened, by his ardent longing for higher and more imperishable things than those on which all the splendour and power of this world generally rest. The most unshakable courage was most certainly the first component of his being; he showed it, while still a youth, in the tumult of the battle of Ascesdune. There was one period when his courage seemed about to desert him. This was when the young king imagined that he saw his country for ever in the hands of the foe, and his people doomed to never-ending despair; but from the ordeal of Athelney he came out proved and victorious, and a large number of brave men rivalled each other in imitating his example. "We have already had occasion, several times, in the course of this work, to notice another peculiarity of Alfred's mind that was attended with no less gratifying results; he possessed a decided turn for invention, which enabled him not only to extricate himself from personal difficulties, but to suggest new and original ideas in the execution of all sorts of artistic productions VOL. I. and handiwork. The pillars on which the church at Athelney was built, the long ships he constructed, the manner in which he turned a river from its natural course, and his clock of tapers, afford us as convincing evidence of his powers of thought as the battles which he gained. "Elevated by his piety above all his subjects and contemporaries, no one could be farther than he was from becoming a weak bigot, willingly bending beneath the yoke of an arrogant priesthood; and, while inmersed in the fulfilment of his religious duties, forgetting the prosperity of worldly affairs, as well as that of his subjects. He was well aware what the country had suffered from the too yielding disposition of his father to the will of the higher ecclesiastics. It is impossible to draw a parallel between Alfred and his descendant Edward the Confessor. The latter lost his kingdom, and was made a saint; the former kept it by the aid of his sword and a firm reliance on the Almighty. The Church of Rome, it is true, did not thank him for this; but he lived, through his works, in the hearts of his people, who celebrated his praises in their songs."-Pauli's Life of Alfred the Great. 13 He next turned his arms against the old tribes of Cornwall, who were fell. Anlaf escaped, with a wretched fragment the year 905, upon which the Danes concluded the court of Athelstane. a peace upon equal terms; for Edward was not yet powerful enough to treat them as a master. The sons of the princes and yarls, and in many instances the individuals themselves, who had been tranquil and submissive under Alfred, soon aimed, not merely at making the Danelagh an independent kingdom, but at conquering the rest of the island. Edward was not deficient in valour or military skill. In the year 911 he gained a most signal victory over the Danes, who had advanced to the Severn; but the whole spirit of Alfred seemed more particularly to survive in his daughter Ethelfleda, sister of Edward, and wife of Ethelred, the Eolderman of Mercia, who has been so often mentioned, and whose death, in 912, left the whole care of that kingdom to his widow. Her brother Edward took possession of London and Oxford, but she claimed, and then defended the rest of Mercia, with the bravery|ries, and where five Danish kings and seven earls and ability of an experienced warrior. Following her father's example, she fortified all her towns, and constructed ramparts and intrenched camps in the proper places; allowing them no rest, she drove the Danes out of Derby and Leicester, and compelled many tribes of them to acknowledge her authority. In the assault of Derby, four of her bravest commanders fell, but she boldly urged the combat until the place was taken. As some of the Welsh had become troublesome, she conducted an expedition, with remarkable spirit and rapidity, against Breccanmere or Brecknock, and took the wife of the Welsh king prisoner. In seeing these, her warlike operations, says an old writer, one would have believed she had changed her sex. The Lady Ethelfleda, as she is called by the chroniclers, died in 920, when Edward succeeded to her authority in Mercia, and prosecuted her plan of securing the country by fortified works. He was active and successful: he took most of the Danish towns between the Thames and the Humber, and forced the rest of the Danelagh that lay north of the Humber to acknowledge his supremacy. The Welsh, the Scots, the inhabi-England, afterwards succeeded to the Norwegian tants of Strathclyde and Cumbria (who still figure as a separate people), and the men of Galloway, are said to have done him homage, and to have accepted him as their "father, lord, and protector." ATHELSTANE. A.D. 925. Edward's dominion far exceeded in extent that of his father Alfred; but his son Athelstane, who succeeded him in 925, established a more brilliant throne, and made a still nearer approach to the sovereignty of all England. By war and policy he reduced nearly all Wales to an inoffensive tranquillity, if not to vassalage. A tribute was certainly paid during a part of the reign, and, together with gold and silver, and beeves, the Welsh were bound to send their best hounds and hawks to Under Athelstane the English court was polished to a considerable degree, and became the chosen residence or asylum of several foreign princes. Harold, the King of Norway, intrusted his son Haco to the care and tuition of the enlightened Athelstane; and his son, by the aid of throne, on which he distinguished himself as a legislator. Louis d'Outremer, the French king, took refuge in London before he secured his throne; and even the Celtic princes of Armorica or Brittany, when expelled their states by the Northmen or Normans, fled to the court of Athelstane in preference to all others. He bestowed his sisters in marriage on the first sovereigns of those times, and, altogether, he enjoyed a degree of respect, and exercised an influence on the general politics of Europe, that were not surpassed by any living sovereign. A horrid suspicion of guilt 1 Supposed by some to be Bourn, in the south of Lincolnshire; by others, Brugh, in the north of the same county. 2 Among the costly presents sent to Athelstane by foreign so |