brother of the Bishop of Wells and of Winchester. It must have been in his father's hall that the fair, diminutive boy, with his scant but beautiful hair, caught his love for "the vain songs of heathendom, the trifling legends, the funeral chaunts," which afterward roused against him the charge of sorcery. Thence, too, he might have derived his passionate love of music, and his custom of carrying his harp in hand on journey or visit. Wandering scholars of Ireland had left their books in the monastery of Glastonbury, as they left them along the Rhine and the Danube; and Dunstan plunged into the study of sacred and profane letters till his brain broke down in delirium. So famous became his knowledge in the neighborhood that news of it reached the Court of Æthelstan; but his appearance there was the signal for a burst of ill-will among the courtiers. They drove him from the king's train, threw him from his horse as he passed through the marshes, and, with the wild passion of their age, trampled him under foot in the mire. The outrage ended in fever, and Dunstan rose from his sick-bed a monk. But the monastic profession was then little more than a vow of celibacy, and his devotion took no ascetic turn. His nature, in fact, was sunny, versatile, artistic, full of strong affections, and capable of inspiring others with affections as strong. Quick-witted, of tenacious memory, a ready and fluent speaker, gay and genial in address, an artist, a musician, he was at the same time an indefatigable worker at books, at building, at handicraft. As his sphere began to widen we see him followed by a train of pupils, busy with literature, writing, harping, painting, designing. One morning a lady summons him to her house to design a robe which she is embroidering, and as he bends. with her maidens over their toil, his harp, hung upon the wall, sounds, without mortal touch, tones which the excited ears around frame into a joyous antiphon.

From this scholar-life Dunstan was called to a wider sphere of activity by the accession of Eadmund. But the old jeal

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ousies revived at his re-appearance at court, and, counting the game lost, Dunstan preferred again to withdraw. The king had spent the day in the chase; the red deer which he was pursuing dashed over Cheddar cliffs, and his horse only checked itself on the brink of the ravine at the moment when Eadmund, in the bitterness of death, was repenting of his injustice to Dunstan. He was at once summoned on the king's return. 'Saddle your horse," said Eadmund, "and ride with me." The royal train swept over the marshes to his home; and the king, bestowing on him the kiss of peace, seated him in the abbot's chair as Abbot of Glastonbury. Dunstan became one of Eadmund's councilors, and his hand was seen in the settlement of the North. The league between Scot and Briton was finally broken up, and the fidelity of the Scots secured by their need of help in holding down their former ally. The settlement was soon troubled by the young king's death. As he feasted at Pucklechurch, in the May of 946, Leofa, a robber whom Eadmund had banished from the land, entered the hall, seated himself at the royal board, and drew sword on the cup-bearer when he bade him retire. The king sprang in wrath to his thane's aid, and seizing Leofa by the hair, flung him to the ground; but in the struggle the robber drove his dagger to Eadmund's heart. His death at once stirred fresh troubles in the North; the Danelagh rose against his brother and successor, Eadred, and some years of hard fighting were needed before it was again driven to own the English supremacy. But with its submission, in 954, the work of conquest was done. Dogged as his fight had been, the Northman at last owned himself beaten. From the moment of Eadred's final triumph all resistance came to an end. The Danelagh ceased to be a force in English politics. North might part anew from South; men of Yorkshire might again cross swords with men of Hampshire, but their strife was henceforth a local strife between men of the same people; it was a strife of

Englishmen with Englishmen, and not of Englishmen with Northmen.

The death of Eadred, in 955, handed over the realm to a child-king, his nephew, Eadwig. Eadwig was swayed by a woman of high lineage, Æthelgifu; and the quarrel between her and the older councilors of Eadred broke into open strife at the coronation feast. On the young king's insolent withdrawal to her chamber, Dunstan, at the bidding of the Witan, drew him roughly back to his seat. But the feast was no sooner ended than a sentence of outlawry drove the abbot over sea, while the triumph of Æthelgifu was crowned, in 957, by the marriage of her daughter to the king, and the spoliation of the monasteries which Dunstan had befriended. As the new queen was Eadwig's kinswoman, the religious opinion of the day regarded his marriage as incestuous, and it was followed by a revolution. At the opening of 958 Archbishop Odo parted the king from his wife by solemn sentence; while the Mercians and Northumbrians rose in revolt, proclaimed Eadwig's brother Eadgar their king, and recalled Dunstan. The death of Eadwig, a few months later, restored the unity of the realm; but his successor, Eadgar, was only a boy of fourteen, and throughout his reign the actual direction of affairs lay in the hands of Dunstan, whose elevation to the see of Canterbury set him at the head of the Church as of the State. The noblest tribute to his rule lies in the silence of our chroniclers. His work, indeed, was a work of settlement, and such a work was best done by the simple enforcement of peace. During the years of rest in which the stern hand of the Primate enforced justice and order, Northmen and Englishmen drew together into a single people. Their union was the result of no direct policy of fusion; on the contrary, Dunstan's policy preserved to the conquered Danelagh its local rights and local usages. But he recognized the men of the Danelagh as Englishmen: he employed Northmen in the royal service, and promoted them to high posts in Church