A natural death they dreaded, as a most ignoble and disgraceful end, and which they always appeared very anxious to avoid. No wonder that they became the terror of every nation against which they happened to wage war. No greater evil could well befall any people than to have them for their enemies and invaders. To no part of this island did the Danes prove a greater, or more terrible scourge than to the province of the East Angles, which became one of their principal settlements, and where they committed the most shocking barbarities. Hence we may very safely conclude that the sufferings which the inhabitants of Lynn experienced from them must have been exceedingly grievous and deplorable. But as those sufferings have not been recorded they cannot now be described or particularized. The Danes, as well as the Anglo-Saxons, when they invaded this country were pagans. Both of them afterward took up the profession of christianity; but it was only its profession, or bare name that they did take up. Their former ferocity still remained. They continued grossly ignorant, superstitious, and heathenish, and exhibited scarcely a spark of the real spirit of the religion of Christ, except perhaps in the latter part of the reign of Alfred. Their ghostly, or religious instructors were miserable and blind guides, or knavish and artful impostors, who taught them that the most meritorious actions consisted in erecting and endowing monasteries, performing pilgrimages, and reverencing the priesthood. From such pretended or pseudo-christianity, what good effect could be expected? Grapes cannot be gathered of thorns, or figs of thistles.—When Earl Alwine, who was the greatest and richest man in England, in the reign of Edgar the peaceable, consulted St. Oswald, bishop of York, what he should do to obtain the pardon of his sins, the _sainted_ prelate made him the following eloquent harangue: “I beseech your excellency to believe that those holy men who have retired from the world, and spend their days in poverty and prayer, are the greatest favourites of heaven, and the greatest blessings to the world. It is by their merits that the divine judgements are averted and changed; that plagues and famines are removed; that healthful seasons and plentiful harvests are procured; that states and kingdoms are governed; that prisons are opened, captives delivered, shipwrecks prevented, the weak strengthened, and the sick healed: that I may say all in one word, it is by their merits that this world, so full of wickedness, is preserved from immediate ruin and destruction. I intreat you therefore, my dear son, if you have any place in your estate fit for that purpose, that you immediately build a monastery, and fill it with holy monks, whose prayers will supply all your defects, and expiate all your crimes.” The Apostles, no doubt, would have answered such an inquiry very differently. The building of Ramsey abbey, however, as Dr. Henry