He resigned her to the care of his mother for a few days, frequently visited her, and speedily married her. "He loved her for the dangers she had passed, And she loved him that he did pity them." Such is the account given in his life, written by a monk of St. Albans, the abbey of which was founded by Offa. Could we prove that Homer was familiar to the monkish historian, we should be justified in imagining that he had transformed Ulysses into Drida, and changed Calypso to Offa; but whether or not, the wild legend has a doubtful look, though it has been quoted by grave authors, and is admitted into several histories. Offa was not a king who sat asleep with the sceptre in his hand; there was the wakeful and ambitious queen Drida now by his side; and, startling as it may seem, the dark events which stained their reign, and the deeds of Offa's daughter, Edburga, would in the hands of a Shakspere furnish the materials for another tragedy, that might stand side by side with Macbeth. Her cold cruel pride, and chilling haughtiness, are said to have broken the heart of Offa's mother, and, in a few months, to have hurried her into the grave. The blinded king saw only her superb beauty, for she appears to have been a female fiend, that outwardly wore an angel's form. Brave as a lion, and possessing talents that would have broken through the gloom of the most benighted period, the Mercian king marched onward from conquest to conquest, now achieving deeds that win our admiration, then sinking down to commit such crimes as must have made his subjects shudder. On each side of him Drida and his daughter are ever rising up, like two spirits that attract our attention, as they come out in the sunshine to smile, or rush shrieking from amid the darkness, into which they had plunged, to accomplish some new and horrible deed; they seem to come and go with a terrible distinctness, that makes us tremble as they either approach or vanish, as if Mercy fled before them, and we heard, in the place from which she had hurried affrighted, dying moans, and Love wailing upon the very lips on which he, expiring, kissed the poison of death. All is dim as a dream, or startling as some appalling reality which we look upon with a doubtful consciousness. So perplexing and unnatural appear the events of this period, that the generality of historians seem to have paused, looked round for a moment, in doubt and wonder, then hastened off to visit less forbidding scenes: as if they feared to grapple with the shadows and the realities, that here seem to be ever exchanging places, throwing aside what is only doubtful as feeble, and dreading to look among events which seem cruel and unnatural for their horrible truth, as if years, because they have rolled away, were empty of events, and days dawned not upon hopes and fears as in the present day. Wild-roses blew, and nightingales sang, as they do now, and the smell and sound were as sweet to those who