The Saxons were robust in their make, tall, at least as compared with the Romans, possessed of fair complexions, blue eyes, and, in almost all instances, light or sandy hair. They were distinguished, from the earliest ages, for indomitable courage and great ferocity. In their social state they acknowledged four ranks or classes of men, among whom intermarriages rarely, if ever, occurred; namely, their nobles, their freemen, their freedmen, and their slaves. They were particularly jealous of the honor of their wives. In ordinary times they acknowledged no single chief, but were governed by an aristocracy; from among the members of which, in the event of war, they chose a king. But the authority of the sovereign lasted only while hostilities continued: at their close, he returned to his original station among the nobles. The Saxons delighted in the perpetration of cruelties, and were themselves regardless of danger. They carried on their predatory warfare chiefly by sea; launching their vessels most cheerfully during the prevalence of the wildest storms, because they took it for granted that their intended victims would, at such moments, be least prepared to escape or to resist them. When the first of these bands arrived in England, they came under the guidance of two nobles, Hengist and Horsa, whom they had themselves elected as leaders in a piratical expedition; and whom they continued to obey, only because the war, in which they became engaged, lasted during the lifetime of those who began it. [Illustration: _Danes._] The religion of the Anglo-Saxons, as they imported it into Britain, was a wild and hideous polytheism, which demanded from its votaries, among other rites, the occasional offering up of human victims. Of some of their gods we retain a remembrance in the names which still attach to the days of the week. They worshipped the Sun, thence our Sunday; the Moon, thence our Monday; Tiw, thence Tuesday; Woden, thence Wednesday; Thurse, thence Thursday; Friga, thence Friday; and Saterne, whence Saturday. About the year 800, the Danes, a nation of sea rovers and robbers, began to infest England. This country had been divided into seven kingdoms, called the Saxon Heptarchy; but these had been condensed into three, and at last the whole Saxon portion of the nation became subject to one king, for the first time. This king was Egbert. He died in 836, and the sceptre passing into feeble hands, the country was exposed to the incursions of the people whom we have mentioned above.