There is in the earliest Germanic times no sharp distinction between the titles "earl" and "king." The viking cruises, however, helped to establish a distinction. The earl who, having gathered a large number of warriors about him, went abroad for purposes of conquest, was hailed by his men as king. A number of vikings, of high birth, assumed the name of kings, when starting on warlike expeditions; but were known as sea-kings, in contra-distinction to those who ruled at home over a fixed domain. The number of these sea-kings increased (for the reasons cited above) enormously toward the close of the eighth century. They harried not only the coasts of the neighboring lands, but they crossed the North Sea and the Baltic, carrying away or slaughtering the inhabitants and destroying the cities. Churches and monasteries they plundered, scattering the bones of the saints to the four winds; all that Christian men held sacred they trod under foot. And yet we must bear in mind that all we know about these early vikings is derived from the writings of their enemies, who were smarting under the injury they had done them. That they were fierce and brutal is credible enough. The warlike state is in itself brutalizing. It arouses all the slumbering savagery in man, and smothers his gentler impulses. But certain moral qualities even their hostile chroniclers concede to them. They admit that the Norse barbarians were, as a rule, faithful to their oaths and kept their promises. Three periods [A] are recognizable in the viking age, though there are, in point of time, no sharp divisions between them. It would, perhaps, be more correct to say that there were three kinds of vikings. The first cruises were more or less tentative and irregular. Chieftains gather about them crews for a few ships and sail over to England, Denmark, or Flanders, where they attack a city or a monastery, and return home with their booty. The second period shows an advance in the art of war and in military experience. Several vikings attack in company some exposed point, take possession of it, erect fortifications, and make forays into the surrounding country. During the third period the Norsemen abandon their character of pirates and assume the rôle of conquerors. With large fleets, counting from one to five hundred ships, they storm and sack cities, assume the government of the conquered territories, treat, as regular belligerents, with kings and emperors, and establish themselves permanently in the conquered land. Of the two first classes of vikings we have only scattered and unreliable accounts. To go on viking cruises is a recognized occupation in the Norse sagas, and it was regarded as a kind of liberal education for a young man of good birth to spend some years of his youth on such expeditions. His honor was thereby greatly increased at home, and his position in society assured. Royal youths of twelve or fifteen years often went abroad as commanders of