It will readily be supposed that the task of demonstrating this is not easy. The early period at which Christianity triumphed in England, adds to the difficulties which naturally beset the subject. Norway, Sweden and Denmark had entered into public relations with the rest of Europe, long before the downfall of their ancient creed: here, the fall of heathendom and the commencement of history were contemporaneous: we too had no Iceland[610] to offer a refuge to those who fled from the violent course of a conversion, preached sword in hand, and coupled with the loss of political independence; still the progress of the new faith seems to have been on the whole easy and continuous amongst us; and though apostasy was frequent, history either had no serious struggle to record, or has wisely and prudently concealed it. ----- Footnote 610: Thus was Iceland colonized, by men who would neither relinquish their old belief, nor submit to the growing power of a king. The Old-saxons had no such place of refuge, and the arms of Charlemagne prevailed to destroy their national independence and their religion together. ----- In dealing with this subject, we can expect but little aid from the usual sources of information. The early chroniclers who lived in times when heathendom was even less extinct than it now is, and before it had learnt to hide itself under borrowed names, would have shrunk with horror from the mention of what to them, was an execrable impiety: many of them could have possessed no knowledge of details which to us would be invaluable, and no desire to become acquainted with them: the whole business of their life, on the contrary, was to destroy the very remembrance that such things had been, to avoid everything that could recall the past, or remind their half-converted neophytes of the creed which they and their forefathers had held. It is obvious that, under such circumstances, the greater and more powerful the God, the more dangerous would he continue to be, the more sedulously would all mention of him be avoided by those who had relinquished his service or overthrown his altars. But though this may be the case with the principal deities, there are others whose power, though unacknowledged, is likely to be more permanent. Long after the formal renunciation of a public and national paganism, the family and household gods retain a certain habitual influence, and continue—often under other names, nay perhaps engrafted on another creed—to inform the daily life of a people who are still unconsciously acted upon by ancient national feelings. A spell or a popular superstition may yet recall some traces of the old belief, even as the heathen temple, when purified with holy water and dedicated in another name, retained the holiness which had at first been attached to the site of its foundation.