Thomas Miller

“ With an overwhelming force compared with that of Ragnar, Ella met the sea-king, and though so unequally matched, the pirate and his followers behaved bravely. Four times did Ragnar rush into the opposing ranks, making an opening through them wherever he appeared. He saw his warriors perish around him one by one, until he alone was left alive out of all that daring band,—every soul, excepting himself, was slain in the combat. Ella took the brave sea-king prisoner, and, bleeding as he was with his wounds, shut him up in a deep dungeon, among live and venomous adders. ”

“ What fear of death had they before their eyes who believed that their souls passed at once into the body of some brave warrior, or that they but quitted the battle-field to be admitted into the abodes of the gods? They sprang from a race whose mothers and wives had many a time hemmed in the back of battle, and with their own hands struck down the first of their tribe who fled,—sparing neither father, husband, brother, nor son, if he once turned his back upon the enemy: a race whose huge war-drums had, centuries before, sounded in Greek and Roman combats. ”

“ The forms that fall upon the pages of history, are like the sunshine and shadow pursuing each other over the face of the ocean, where the golden fades into the grey; and as each wave washes nearer to the shore, it is ever changing its hue, from gloom to brightness, until it breaks upon the beach, and is no more. Arthur leading on the Britons, with the image of the Virgin upon his shield, seems, in our eyes, only like some armed phantom, standing upon the rim of the horizon at sunset, and pointing with his sword towards the coming darkness ”

“ There must have been some strange charm in the society of the soldier-monk, thus to have won over the young king to share with him such a solitude, for the marshes of Croyland must in those days have worn a most forbidding appearance, and even now, as they wave in summer, with their dark, coarse patches of goose-grass, and in some places, no stir of life is seen, excepting where the gosherd drives before him his noisy flock, an air of melancholy reigns over the scenery, and the mind unconsciously wanders back among the shadows of the dead. ”

“ Edilburga might smile, and Paulinus pray, but the tramp of the war-horse, and the ringing of the sword upon the buckler, and the clang of the battle-axe, as it cleaved its way through helmet and armour, were sweeter sounds than these; the spirit within but yearned for the sleep which was purchased by a dearly won victory; even the eyes of grey-headed old men brightened when the contest was talked over in which they had fought, and they went out of the hall, tottering at every step, to bask in the sunshine, and sigh over the deeds done in those "good old times." ”

“ The javelin with its leathern thong lies useless beside the bare brawny arm that could hurl it to within an inch of its mark, then recover it again without stepping from out the ranged rank; the dreaded spear lies broken, and the sharp head trodden deep into the sand by a Roman footstep. Higher up the beach, we hear the thunder of the scythe-wheeled war-chariots of the Britons, and catch glimpses of the glittering and outstretched blades, as they sparkle along in their swift career like a silvery meteor, and all we can trace of their course is the zig-zag pathway streaked with blood. ”

“ We have seen the shadow of this great king pass, through the clouds of sorrow and suffering, into the glory and immortality which still shed their lustre around his memory, after the darkness of nearly a thousand winters has gathered and passed over his grave. Even the gloomy gates of death could not extinguish, in the volumed blackness they enclose, the trailing splendour which accompanied his setting, without leaving behind a summer twilight, over a land where before there was nothing but darkness to mark the departing day. ”

“ Still we have before us the stirring times of Offa the Terrible; Egbert and Ethelwulf followed by the stormy sea-kings, whose invasions were more merciless than those of the Saxons; for the history of this period is like an ocean studded with islands, some of which lie near together, others wide apart; and many which, from the distance, seem to have a barren and forbidding look, are, on a nearer approach, found rich in ancient remains; and though now silent and desolate, we discover in what is left behind traces of the once mighty inhabitants, that ages ago have passed away. ”

“ Surely no king had ever greater cause to feel unhappy; the man who, day after day, struggles on, and still finds matters worse on the morrow, becomes weary of the ever-flickering rays of hope, grows desperate, and plunges amongst the deepest shadows of despair; others, again, through very despondency, fold their arms, and wait until the worst comes, as if a fatality overwhelmed them, for all human perseverance hath its limits; these once passed, men become believers in inevitable destiny. To these Alfred, at this time, probably belonged. ”

“ Suddenly the Danish force turned upon their pursuers. Hubba made a circle with his cavalry to the right; to the left the centre came back like an overwhelming wave, and the Saxons were surrounded. All was lost. Neither the skill of Algar nor the bravery of Tolius were now of any avail; there was nothing left but to stand side by side, and to fight until they fell. But few of that brave band escaped; those who did, availed themselves of the approaching darkness, and plunging into the adjoining forest, hastened to the distant monastery of Croyland, to publish their own defeat. ”

“ A queen rushes out of the chamber, and leaves behind her the yet warm body of the husband she has poisoned, crosses the sea, and becomes an abbess. A young king comes wooing, in all the hey-day of life, is allured from the banquet by the mother of the fair princess for whose hand he is suing, taken into the next apartment, and put to death. And these are the solemn truths of English history—the dark deeds that were done by those who sat on the very throne which Alfred the Great himself occupied. ”

“ The shores of Time are thickly strown with the remains of extinct animals, which, when living, the eye of man never looked upon, as if from the deep sea of Eternity had heaved up one wave, which washed over and blotted out for ever all that was coëval with her silent and ancient reign, leaving a monument upon the confines of this old and obliterated world, for man in a far and future day to read, on which stands ever engraven the solemn sentence, "Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further!"—beyond this boundary all is Mine! ”

“ They were the undoubted offspring of the dark Cimmerii of antiquity, those dreaded indwellers of caves and forests, those brave barbarians whose formidable helmets were surmounted by the figures of gaping and hideous monsters; who wore high nodding crests to make them look taller and more terrible in battle, considering death on the hard-fought field as the crowning triumph of all earthly glory. From this race sprang those ancient British tribes who presented so bold a front to Julius Cæsar, when his Roman galleys first ploughed the waves that washed their storm-beaten shores. ”

“ We are compelled to drag the great king bit by bit before our readers, lest we should startle them by his too sudden appearance; for he seems to rise above the age in which he lived with an unnatural majesty—there is no relief near to where he stands, no neighbouring summit which he might descend that would seem to lessen his giant form in its shadow;—bold and bare and giant-like his god-imaged figure heaves up, and with its mighty shadow eclipses the very sunset which, though ever sinking, leaves not in gloom the bright form that makes the "darkness visible" by which it is surrounded. ”

“ What should we have known of the earlier Britons but for Julius Cæsar? Who can doubt but that the Saxons cared only to chronicle the deeds of their own countrymen, or who can tell how many records were destroyed by the misbelieving Danes on a later day? We have more than tradition to prove the existence of Arthur: he is alluded to by the ancient bards, and mentioned by them in succession, for as one caught up and carried forward the Cymric lay of another, so did he allude to warriors of other days. ”

“ What few fragments we find in the old Welsh bards, alluding to these ancient battles, are filled with dreadful descriptions, and awful images of slaughter. We are borne onward, from the shout of the onset, to the mighty shock when the opposing ranks close in battle, when blade clashes against blade, when dark frowning men sink with gory seams on their foreheads, and tall chieftains rock and struggle together in the combat, and as each knee is brought to the ground, it rests upon a bed of gore, while battle-axes, as they are uplifted, and glitter a moment in the air, shed down crimson drops. ”

“ A grand sight must it have been to have witnessed the Saxon banner, with the white horse displayed upon its folds, floating above that grey old druidical monument—to have seen that assembly of brave warriors in the morning sunshine encamped beside the great willow wood, which was then waving in all the green luxuriance that adorns the willow-tree at the latter end of May. It was a sight which, once to have seen, would have made an old man die happy. ”

“ From the time the sun rose up in the morning hour, to when the great star of the eternal Lord, that noble creature, God's candle bright, hastened to his setting, they pursued and destroyed the Scottish bands, and the men of the fleet in numbers dying, fell, and the wide field was everywhere covered with the blood of warriors; many a soldier lay there dead with darts struck down; many heroes over whose shields the showery arrows were shot, whom the battle would never again weary, and who would never more boast that they were of the race of Mars the Red. ”

“ It is painful, even only in fancy, to picture the return of those British warriors from the forest; how startling must have been the very silence which reigned over those ruins, the vast dreary woodland wilderness behind, the levelled walls and the bodies of the dead before—here the remains of a beloved home which the destroying fire had blackened—on the hearth a beautiful form, with her long hair steeped in her own heart's blood, her child stretched across her arm, over which the heavy rafter had in mercy fallen, the wolf already prowling about the threshold. ”

“ The archers continued to discharge their arrows in the air, but where they alighted no gap was visible—there was the same firm front—the same wedge-like mass—the unaltered array of shields—the deep range of firm figures rising above one another, which displayed neither fear nor defeat, but stood grim, unmoved, and resolved; strong pillars, that can neither be made to bend nor bow, until the building which they support is destroyed, and they themselves lay broken and shapeless amid the ruins. Such was the power duke William had still to contend with. ”