Augustine

ing of Hengist and Horsa in 449, saw in 597 a band of men, calling thems

th a picture of Christ, chanting in concert, as they went, the litany of their Church. Ch

e Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm consisting in the

a bird flies through this hall on a winter night, coming out of the darkness, and vanishing into the darkn

he new religion, and in less than one hundr

nity a new life began to cour

mon Father of E

to "Sing." "He was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision." He wrote epics upon all the sacred themes, from th

r, was but the echo of this poet-peasant

ntry, and discoursed upon astronomy, physics, meteorology, medicine, and philosophy. These were but the early lispings of Science; but they held the germs

in Alfred, who came to the throne

esmanlike grasp of conditions, an unsullied heart, and a clear, stro

dom, which was prefaced by the Ten Commandments, and ended with the Golden Rule; while in his leisure hours he gave coherence and form to the literature of the time. Taki

and literature besides. The people of Wantage, his native town, did well, in 1849,

e distance between the king and the people had widened from a mere step to a gulf. When the Saxon kings began to be clothed with a mysterious dignity as "the Lord's a

n war, and by accessions through misery, poverty, and debt, which drove men to sell themselves and families and wear the collar of servitude. The sla

the general condition. As the lesser Kingdoms were merged into one large one, the wider dominion of the king removed him furt

and hence rested upon the individual English freeman, who knew no superior but God, and the law. Now, he had sunk into the mere "villein," bound to follow his lord to the field, to give him

then away again to their own homes or lairs. Their boast was that they "scorned to earn by sweat what they might win by blood." But the Northmen from Denmark were of a different sort. They were looking for permanent conquest, and had dreams of Empire, and, in fact, had had more or less of a grasp upon Engl

anish Kings,

dinavian empire, which should include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and England. He was one of those monumental men who mark the periods in the pages of History, and yet child enou

f the two nations were almost the same, and a race affinity took away much of the bittern

orty years after the Conquest had so exasperated the Anglo-Saxons that enough of the primitive spirit retur

rd the Confesso

lm in the hands of Earl Godwin. This man was the first great English statesman who had been neither Priest nor King. Astute, powerful, dexterous, he w

a vast deal of history. This Princess of Normandy, was the grandmother of the man, who was to be known as "William the Conqueror." In the absence of a direct heir to the

is assistance in securing his rights upon the death of Edward the Confessor. A tremendous indignation stirred his righteo

Conquest, 1066. De

Barons and a motley host, actually cutting down the trees with which to create a fl

An arrow pierced the unhappy Harold in the eye, entering the brain, and the head which had worn the c

iam I., King of

ward the Confessor; and that those who had supported Harold were traitors, and their lands confiscated to the crown. As nearly all had been loy

for centuries. With the genius of the born ruler and conqueror, William discerned the danger, and its remedy. Availing himself of the early legal constitution of England, he placed justice in the old local courts of the "hundred" and "shire," to which every freeman h

seized the entire landed property of the State, and then used it to buy the allegiance of the people. By this means the whole Nation was at his command as an

ned,-not by his name-but his mark, for the Conqueror of England (from wh

ss, palace, prison, it stands to-day the grim progenitor of the Cas

es failed. Their hoarded treasure flowed into the land. They built the first stone houses, and domestic architecture was created. Jewish gold built Castles and Cathedrals, and awoke the slumbering sense of beauty. Thro

Book." Meeting at S

n he summoned all the nobles and large landholders to meet him at Salisbury Plain, and those shapeless blocks at "Stonehenge" witnessed a strange scene when 60,000 men there took solemn oath to support William as King even against their own lords. With this splendid consummation his work was practically finished. He

. When hides were hung on the City Walls at Alencon, in insult to his mother (the daughter of a tanner), he tore out the eyes, cut off the hands and feet of the prisoners, and threw them over the walls. When he did this, and when he refused Harold's body a grav

nd, through France became the heir to Latin institutions, and was joined to the great continuous stream of the World's highest development. Fresh intellectual stimulus renovated the Ch

and assimilate all these new elements and be himself-be Saxon still. The language of Bunyan and of the Bible, is Saxon; and it is the language of the Englishman to-day in childhood and in extremity. A man who is thoroughly in e

y. The Anglo-Saxon put on the new civilization and institutions brought him by the Conquest, as he would an embr