that many of them, preferring freedom to the despotism of a master, left the country with their bravest warriors. During this period, all the churches and monasteries of the province were destroyed. In 828, the Danish power in Northumberland must have been great, or they would not have been powerful, enough to defeat Egbert, the conqueror of so many Saxon kingdoms, and the founder of the English monarchy. After the year 866, when, as we believe, there were many Norwegians in England, new atrocities were committed,—atrocities which threw all former ones into the shade. The monastery of Tynemouth, which had been restored, was soon in flames; that of Lindisfarne shared the same fate; yet the monks were so fortunate as to escape with the relics of St. Cuthbert. From the smoking ruins of Lindisfarne, Halfdan, one of the chiefs, hastened to the monastery of Coldingham. “According to Matthew of Westminster and succeeding writers, the nuns of Coldingham nobly redeemed the reputation of their establishment from the stain which had covered it in the time of St. Cuthbert. The monastery was now, as in the former case, governed by an abbess, named Ebba; who, if the historian be credible, deserves the honours of canonisation somewhat better than her predecessor. Hearing that it was the custom of the barbarians first to violate, and then to destroy, virgins consecrated to God, she assembled the sister-hood in the chapter house, and exhorted them to save their chastity at the expense of their beauty. With a knife she dreadfully disfigured her countenance; and her example was followed on the spot by all the nuns. The Danes soon forced their gates; but turned with horror from their embraces, and quickly consumed both them and their nunnery. Though the monk of Westminster lived so long after the time, he might follow some better guide than tradition—some record now lost; nor is the fact itself either improbable or unparalleled. The same noble conduct is related of the nuns of Ecija, during the Mohammedan invasion of Spain. During seven years similar depredations followed throughout most of Northumbria. Wherever the Danes penetrated, ecclesiastics were massacred, churches and monasteries were levelled with the ground; the whole country, in fact, became a Danish province, governed by princes of the royal house of that kingdom. Great as was the evil produced by these merciless pagans; though the monks, as an order, were almost wholly annihilated, and civilisation was destroyed, yet the invasion itself led to the conversion of the invaders. Resolved to remain in the country which they had conquered, to cultivate the lands which they had divided among themselves, they were compelled to enter into relations of amity with the inhabitants, from whose example, or by whose persuasion, they soon embraced the faith of Christ. That the Danish princes were soon no less devout than their Saxon brothers appears from the splendid donation