From the death of Alfred (901) to the Norman Conquest (1066) there was monkish work done in shape of Homilies, Chronicles, grammars of Latin and English--the language settling more and more into something like a determined form of what is now called Anglo-Saxon. But in that lapse of years I note only three historic incidents, which by reason of the traditions thrown about them, carry a piquant literary flavor. _Canute and Godiva._ The _first_ is when the famous Canute, king of both England and Denmark, and having strong taste for song and music and letters, rows by the towers of a great East-England religious house, and as he drifts with the tide, composes (if we may trust tradition) a snatch of verse which has come down to us in a thirteenth century form, about the pleasant singing of the Monks of Ely. Wordsworth has embalmed the matter in one of his Ecclesiastic Sonnets (xxx.): A pleasant music floats along the mere, From monks in Ely chanting service high, While as Canute the king is rowing by; My oarsman, quoth the mighty king, draw near That we the sweet songs of the monks may hear. He listens (all past conquests and all schemes Of future vanishing like empty dreams) Heart-touched, and haply not without a tear, The royal minstrel, ere the Choir is still, While his free barge skims the smooth flood along Gives to the rapture an accordant Rhyme O suffering Earth! be thankful; sternest Clime And rudest Age are subject to the thrill Of heaven-descended piety and song. I think you will never go under the wondrous arches of Ely Cathedral--and you should go there if you ever travel into the eastern counties of England--without thinking of King Canute and of that wondrous singing of the monks, eight hundred years ago. The _second_ historic incident of which I spoke, is the murder of King Duncan by Macbeth in the year 1039, some twenty-five years before the Norman Conquest. I don’t think you want any refreshing about Macbeth. The _third_ incident is of humbler tone, yet it went to show great womanly devotion, and lifted a tax from the heads of a whole towns-people. I refer to the tradition of Earl Leofric of Mercia and the Lady Godiva of Coventry, based in the main, without doubt, upon actual occurrence, and the subject for centuries of annual commemoration.[11] Tennyson tells, in his always witching way, how