We now arrive at one of the darkest pages of English history--a massacre which throws into shade the sanguinary slaughter committed by the command of Hengist, at Stonehenge. By what means this vast conspiracy was formed is not clearly stated, although it is on record that letters were sent secretly from the king to every city and town in England, commanding all the Saxon people throughout the British dominions to rise on the same day, and at the same hour, to slaughter the Danes. On the day that ushered in the feast of St. Brice, in the year 1002, this cruel command was executed, though we trust that there is some exaggeration in the accounts given by the ancient chroniclers, which state, that all the Danish families scattered throughout England; husbands, wives, children, down to the smiling infant that pressed the nipple with "its boneless gums," were, within the space of one brief hour, mercilessly butchered. Even Gunhilda, the sister of Swein, the Danish king, who had married a Saxon earl, and become a Christian, was not saved from the inhuman massacre; and her boy, though the son of a Saxon nobleman, was first slain before her face, ere she herself was beheaded. For nearly five generations had the Danes been settled down in England; yet we fear this dreadful order spared not those whose forefathers had been born on the soil. Through the eye of imagination we look with horror upon such a scene. We picture near neighbours who had lived together for years--who had, when children, played together--who had grown up and intermarried;--we picture the wife rising up against the husband, the father slaying his son-in-law; for neither guest, friend, nor relation appear to have been spared. The insolence, and excess, and brutality of the Danish soldiers formed no excuse for the slaughter of the more peaceable inhabitants who had so long been allowed to occupy the land, and had become naturalized to the soil. Pomp and grandeur, and military array, to a certain extent, disguise the horrors of war, though they lessen not the effect such scenes produce upon a sensitive mind: but here there was nothing to conceal cold-blooded and naked murder from the open eye of day. But Swein is already at the head of his fleet, riding over the billows, and to him we will now turn, as he stands upon the deck of his vessel, breathing vengeance against the Saxons.