"Over the hawk's station, over the hawk's banquet of heads, Over the quivering of the spears, reddening was the wing; Over the howling of the storm the course of the sea-gull was seen; Over the blood, whirling and flowing, the exulting ravens were screaming, They hovered above the treasure of the fierce-winged race, And their clamour went spreading through the sky." CYNDDELU'S DEATH OF OWEN. During the period in which the events occurred that are narrated in the opening pages of our last chapter, another body of Saxons had arrived in Britain, and settled down in Essex, where under Erkenwin they laid the foundation of that kingdom or state, which eventually extended into Middlesex, and included London--then a town of considerable note, though bearing no marks of its high destiny, as its few houses heaved up and overlooked the Thames. Little did the fisherman dream, as he turned back to gaze upon his humble home, where the morning sunbeams fell, that the hut in which he had left his children asleep, stood where a city would one day rise, that should become the metropolis of England, and the envy of surrounding nations. Still less did those ancient Saxons, as they landed in the marshes of Essex, ever imagine that they were marching onward towards a town, whose renown would one day spread to the uttermost ends of the earth, a city which would at last arrest the gaze of the whole wide world, whose grandeur would only be eclipsed by its greatness, and stand the sun of the earth, defying all eyes to point out, amid the blaze of its splendour, where its brightness began or where it ended. But while the tide which bore on a new population was thus setting in, and the kingdom of East Anglia was formed by a portion of the Saxon tribe, who have left no other names behind than those given to the counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, the most formidable force that had hitherto arrived in Britain, since the time of the Romans, landed between the Tweed and the Firth of Forth. Forty ships were at once anchored near the mouths of these rivers, and from them stepped on shore, Ida and his twelve sons, with a number of nameless chiefs, who belonged to the tribe of Angles, and a long train of Saxon followers, all of whom had sworn to acknowledge Ida as their king, for he also claimed descent from the inexhaustible stock of Woden. Between the Clyde and the Humber, the country was divided amongst many of the British tribes, all of whom had their separate king, or chief, and were ever doing their utmost, unconsciously, to aid the conquest of the Saxons, by waging war with each other. Bernicia and Deira, as they were afterwards called, were at the time of Ida's landing governed by the following kings or chiefs, for it is difficult to distinguish their proper titles, named Gall, Dyvedel, Ysgwnell, Urien, the patron of Taliesin the bard, Rhydderc the generous, Gwallog, Aneurin, himself a poet, together with other sovereigns whose very