and falsify. Every faculty is liable to abuse and misdirection, and Imagination among the rest; but it is a mistake, to suppose that it necessarily tends to pervert the truth of history, and to mislead the judgment. On the contrary, our view of any transaction, especially one that is remote in time or place, will necessarily be imperfect, generally incorrect, unless it embrace something more than a bare outline of the occurrences-unless we have before the mind a lively idea of the scenes in which the events took place, the habits of thought and of feeling of the actors, and all the circumstances connected with the transaction unless, in short, we can, in a considerable degree, transport ourselves out of our own age, and country, and persons, and imagine ourselves the agents or spectators. It is from a consideration of all these circumstances that we are enabled to form a right judgment as to the facts which history records, and to derive instruction from it. What we imagine may, indeed, be wholly imaginary, that is, unreal; but may be what actually does or did exist. To say that Imagination, if not regulated by sound judgment and sufficient knowledge, may chance to convey to us false impressions of past events, is only to say that man is fallible. But such false impressions are even much the more likely to take possession of those whose imagination is feeble or uncultivated. They are apt to imagine the things, persons, times, countries, &c., which they read of, as much less different from what they see around them than is really the case.

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This may serve to correct a common misapprehension respecting the functions of the Imagination, and to show that, when disciplined and cultivated, it serves the cause of truth. This, too, is to be thought of, that the neglect of its culture does not extinguish it; for existing, as it does, though in very different degrees, in all minds, it will act in some way, perhaps feebly, and fitfully, and irregularly; and if it is not trained in the service of wisdom and truth,

it certainly will be found in alliance with folly and falsehood. I pass to another authority, immeasurably higher, when I quote a single sentence from Lord Bacon, who has said that "Dramatic poetry is like history made visible, and is an image of actions past, as if they were present."

When Milton visited the south of Europe, it was in his thoughts, after wandering in Valdarno, and by the leafy brooks of Vallombrosa, and amid the ruins of Rome, to cross from Italy over into Greece. But this cherished purpose was thwarted by tidings that came from his own afflicted country; and, deeming it the duty of England's sons to stand upon England's soil in her season of adversity, he speeded homeward. Greece was never seen by Milton; out the spiritual power of his imagination, enriched as it was with classic lore, had borne him to the glorious promontory of Attica. He had seen the olive groves of Academe; he had heard the whispers of the waters of Ilissusthe industrious murmur of the bees; he had felt the pure air that was wafted from the waves of the bright Ægean Sea to mingle with the breath of the flowery Hymettus; and so true was this vision, that a learned traveller, gazing over the country around Athens, exclaimed: "I cannot leave this spot without repeating the description given by one who was no eye-witness of it. To omit it would be injustice to Athens as well as to Milton." Reed.

AMALGAMATION OF THE DANISH AND ANGLO-SAXON RACES. (859.)

If the middle of the ninth century must be termed the darkest period of the human mind, it is the most unsettled period of human society. Outside of the narrowing limits of peopled Christendom, enemies are pressing on every side. Saxons, in the east, are laying their hands in reverence on the manes of horses, and swearing in the name of Odin; Saracens, in the south and west; and suddenly France, Germany, Italy, and England, are awakened to the presence and possible supremacy of a more dreaded invader than either, for the Vikinger, or Norsemen, were abroad upon the sea, and all Christendom was exposed to their ravages. Wherever a river poured its waters into the ocean, on the coast of Narbonne, or Yorkshire, or Calabria, or Friesland, boats, small in size, but countless in number, penetrated into the inland towns, and disembarked wild and fearless warriors, who seemed inspired by the mad fanaticism of some inhuman faith, which made charity and mercy a sin. Starting from the islands and rugged mainland of the present Denmark and Norway, they swept across the stormy North Sea, shouting their hideous song of glory and defiance, and springing to land when they reached their destination with the agility and bloodthirstiness of famished wolves. Their business was to carry slaughter and destruction wherever they went. They looked with contempt on the lazy occupations of the inhabitants of town or farm, and, above all, were filled with hatred and disdain of the monks and priests. Their leaders were warriors and poets. Gliding up noiseless streams, they intoned their battle-cry and shouted the great deeds of their ancestors when they reached the walls of some secluded monastery, and rejoiced in wrapping all its terrified inmates in flames. Bards, soldiers, pirates, buccaneers, and heathens, destitute of fear,

or pity, or remorse, amorous of danger, and skilful in management of ship and weapon, these were the most ferocious visitants which Southern Europe had ever seen. No storm was sufficient to be a protection against their approach. On the crest of the highest waves, their frail barks were seen by the affrighted dwellers on the shore, careering with all sail set, and steering into their port. They sailed up the Thames and pillaged London. Winchester was given to the flames. The whole Isle of Thanet was seized and permanently occupied. The magic standard, a raven, embroidered by the daughters of the famous Regner Lodbrog (who had been stung to death by serpents in a dungeon into which he was thrown by Ella, king of Northumberland), was carried from point to point, and was thought to be the symbol of victory and revenge. The offending Northumbrian now felt the wrath of the sons of Lodbrog. They landed with a great army, and after a battle, in which the chiefs of the English were slain, took the Northumbrian kingdom. Nottingham was soon after captured and destroyed. It was no longer a mere incursion. The noble and great families of Denmark came over to their new conquest, and stationed themselves in strong fortresses, commanding large circles of country, and lived under their Danish regulations. The land, to be sure, was not populous at that time, and probably the Danish settlements were accomplished without the removal of any original occupiers. But the castles they built, and the towns which rapidly grew round them, acted as outposts against the remaining British possessions; and at last, fleet after fleet disembarked their thousands of warlike colonists-when Leicester, Lincoln, Stamford, York, and Chester, were all in Danish hands, and stretched a line of entrenchments round the lands they considered their own— the divided Anglo-Saxons were glad to purchase a cessation of hostilities by guaranteeing to them for ever the places and territories they had secured. And there was now a Danish kingdom enclosed by the frag

ments of the English empire; there were Danish laws and customs, a Danish mode of pronunciation, and for a good while a still broader gulf of demarcation established between the peoples by their diversity in religious faith. But when Alfred attained the supreme power, and although respecting the treaties between the Danes and English, yet evidently able to defend his countrymen from the aggressions of their foreign neighbour, the pacified pirate, tired of the sea and softened by the richer soil and milder climate of his new home, began to perceive the very unsatisfactory nature of his ancient belief, and rapidly gave his adhesion to the lessons of the Gospel. White.

NORMAN OPPRESSION. (1066—1076.)

THE whole country is again wrested from the Anglo-Saxons by new invaders. From the Tweed to the Land's End, and from the sea of Gaul to the Severn, the English population was subdued, and overawed by the presence of the army of their conquerors. There were no longer any free provinces, any masses of Englishmen united in arms, or under military organisation. A few separate bands, the remnant of the Saxon armies or garrisons, were to be met with here and there; soldiers who were without leaders, or chiefs without followers. The war was continued only by the successive pursuit after these partisans: the most considerable among them were solemnly judged and condemned, the rest were placed at the discretion of the foreign soldiers, who made them serfs on their acquired estates, or frequently subjected them to massacre under such circumstances of barbarity that an ancient historian, alluding to the same, refused to enter on the details, as being either inconceivable or hazardous to relate. Such of the vanquished as had any means left of expatriating them