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ages long since forgotten-to hold communion with the gigantic champions of legendary romance. То whomsoever these skeletons may have belonged, their athletic owners must have lived in a time anterior to the invention of gunpowder (this we think is sufficiently established by the nature of their wounds); anterior to the Norman invasion, and the conquest of our country by William and his steel-clad paladins, for it was not their custom to bury their own dead and that of their enemies in undistinguished heaps; anterior to any era of which we possess a detailed account, for no history could pass over the mention of a battle in which there might be counted the enormous number of thirty thousand slain, and so far into the darkest ages of the past we can only grope our way blindly to that conclusion at which we are fain to arrive.

When a conundrum is proposed, every man has a right to hazard a guess; and after all what guess-work is the entire study of antiquities, from the hieroglyphics of which ten years ago we were satisfied we knew the whole language and interpretation, to the cuneiform alphabet, which has swept away the results of laborious centuries, and demolished like a spider's web the ingenious and plausible theories that step by step had been building an elaborate superstructure on a baseless foundation. We, too, will take our blindfold shot at the bones of Rothwell,' and speaking under correction of all antiquarians and archæologians, gentlemen for whose acquirements we entertain a profound veneration, not unmixed with fear should we be caught tripping in the obstinate certainties of facts and dates, will declare it to be our present belief, until satisfied we are in error, that the skeletons which we have endeavoured to describe are the remains of our Scandinavian

ancestors.

For such a conviction we have several reasons, although in this respect we are somewhat like Napoleon's marshal, who, amongst his thirty excuses for not bringing up his cannon, found his Emperor did not care to hear more than the first, viz., that he had none to bring. So

the first of our reasons for believing the Rothwell remains to be Scandinavian is, that we are unable to imagine what else they can be. English, Norman, or Roman, we have already said we conceive the silence of history sufficiently proves they are not; against their being Druidical or ancient British, the Saxon arching of the vault in which they lie is a strong argument; and it remains consequently for the Saxon or the Dane to claim these gigantic warriors as his countrymen.

Now this is our theory-that the vault in which these remains are deposited was a receptacle devised by the Saxons as a burial place for their Danish foes; that they stored them carefully in the position in which we now find them, in order to visit at intervals and in triumph these trophies of their prowess. Perhaps when their enemies had subjected the greater part of the island, they may have retired to this secret place and such a place had need to have been kept secret under such circumstances to solemnize those Christian rites which they dared not acknowledge in presence of their heathen conquerors. Deep under ground and surrounded by the bones of their grim oppressors, here they may have sworn eternal warfare for the independence of their country, undying hatred to the Dane-and who can say what important events in the history of our father-land may have originated from these dark gatherings in the gloomy vaults of Rothwell?

We cannot but think that this place of sepulture was devoted exclusively to Danish remains, and that the Saxon would have shrunk from mingling his dust with that of his hereditary enemy; and this supposition is borne out by the gigantic proportions of the skeletons, and the family likeness, so to speak, which pervades most of the skulls that have as yet been examined. They are all, or nearly all, apparently of one race, and what race so probable as the grand old Sea-Kings of the northern Continent? the stalwart champions of Odin, that never set foot upon a shore but they reduced its inhabitants to subjection and vassalage, that never lost a battle but the victory of their

1853.]

Touching our Northern Ancestors.

opponents was purchased dearly as a defeat?

Sea-King, Berserkar, Viking, Scandinavian, Norseman, or Dane, call them what we will, they were indeed a glorious people; and it is to that wild strain of adventure in our blood that we owe our British predominance and what we loosely term our Anglo-Saxon energy. We are more Danish than either, for what is our boasted Norman descent but a Scandinavian cross? and truly we may be proud of our ancestors.

From all accounts that we can gather of these formidable invaders, their personal prowess and proportions approached the gigantic; and Sir Walter Scott, in Harold the Dauntless, has well depicted the type of a race far and wide

Feared for their hardihood, Their strength of frame and their fury of mood.

Physical power was, next to physical courage, the sine quâ non of him who worshipped a war-god and believed the entrance of his spirit into its heavenly Walhalla could only be attained by a violent death in battle; that its recreations there would consist of perpetual fighting and draughts of mead quaffed from a slaughtered foeman's skull. The training of such heroes in their youth, like that of the Irish gentlemen of the last century, must have killed off all the 'soft' ones long before they arrived at man's estate, and it is no wonder that such as survived, being

Rocked in a buckler and fed from a blade, should have become giants in stature and athletes in strength. Such must have been the proprietors of the huge bones in question; and the negro's skull, which at first sight seems to argue against our theory, will, on consideration, be found to make strongly in its favour, when we reflect on the dominion by land and sea enjoyed by these waterdragons of old.

Whilst the contented Saxon was

41

tilling the fertile soil of Britain, or feeding hogs in the acorn-dropping forests and impervious thickets that clothed his lovely home, the adventurous Norseman, like his British descendant, chose the ocean for his inheritance, and every sea-board he could discover for his possession. He colonized the snow-clad volcanoes of Iceland, and pushed forward into the great Atlantic, till he reached America.* He harried the coasts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and descending upon Normandy, made it his own, in name and character, to the present day. What were the warriors of Robert Guiscard in Italy and Sicily-what were the lances of Tancred and Baldwin in the Crusades, but the descendants of Norsemen? He explored eastward to the White Seahe overran the shores of Russia-he descended to the Euxine, and his heavy tread was heard at the gates of Constantinople. In the very inner chambers of the effeminate emperors, who blushed not to retain the name of Roman, watch and ward was kept day and night by the Varangian body-guard-and what were the Varangians but Norsemen pur sang? He marched across Germany under the command of Schweitzerus, and entering Switzerland, gave it the name of his enterprising leader; nor was he to be deterred by distance, civilization, or force of arms, from devastating the lowlands of Belgium, braving the chivalry of Gaul under the very walls of Paris, or making his fruitless descents upon the inhospitable coasts of Spain. In short, wherever wealth was to be won, prosperity to be plundered, or blows to be exchanged, there was the Norseman's galley to be seen-there, to use the words of Macaulay,

On the wall the crowd might mark
The track of his destroying bark.
And hinds aghast and trembling fly,

To woods and caverns when they spy
His thrice accursed sail.

Owning, then, as the Norsemen

There is reason to believe that the State of Massachusetts was first discovered in the tenth century by some adventurers from Iceland via Greenland, who called it 'Finland the Good;' this was five centuries before the era of Columbus. That great man doubtless visited Iceland before his first immortal expedition to America, and it is not too much to suppose that what he there heard corroborated his preconceived notions on the subject of a Western Continent.

unquestionably did, settlements and possessions on nearly every known sea-board, it is quite possible that he may have become the proprietor of negros as slaves, or been joined by the oppressed Africans as comrades. The presence of the Ethiopian, then, although in strange company, may be easily accounted for; and when we consider the footing which the Danes established in the heart of England, and more especially in Northamptonshire, we may fairly argue the probability of their having left their dead here after a succession of actions in which they had been worsted, or their defeat in some great battle, which freed our country, but of which we have no

account.

Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi sed omnes illacrimabiles
Urguentur ignotique longâ

Nocte, carent quia vate sacro. Under the reign of the elder Edward, from the year 917 to 921, we find the Danes in actual possession as lords and masters of the town of Northampton; and Towcester was, about the same period, fortified and surrounded with a strong stone walk to resist their raids and inroads. In 1010, they marched upon Northampton, from which they had been expelled for nearly a century, burned the town, and wasted the adjoining plain. And, some fifty years later, they advanced to give battle to Harold himself under the same walls that had before witnessed their triumph and ex

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would amply repay the inquiring antiquarian.

Independent of the many old. world curiosities and attractions so freely scattered over the county-independent of the beautiful old church and the vaults of death, which it is his express purpose to visit, he would find in the summer a picturesque country of hill and dale, clothed with verdure and adorned with every description of woodland scenery; whilst in the winter months he might combine with his scientific studies the relaxation of a gallop over the freest pastures that ever breathed a steed.

We had almost forgotten to mention that in one corner of that vault, in which we have now been mouldering too long, there is a separate pile of bones and corresponding skulls, from the proportions and formation of which anatomists argue them to belong to our northern brethren. 'The high cheek bones,' say they, and, we presume, the greater elongation of the occiput, stamp them indubitably Scotch.

Of this we are not sufficiently skilled in comparative phrenology to give an opinion; but granting that such is the case, nothing appears to us more natural, knowing the dominion enjoyed by the Danes in the north of England, through the whole of Northumberland, and far across what is now the Border, than that a body of our canny neighbours should have marched under their orders, or joined them as allies in any expedition promising plunder and free quarters in the heart of fertile England. And no contemptible auxiliaries either; for truly the bones which we examined in this Caledonian corner, denuded as they were of all their former clothing of muscle and sinew, argued proportions that would not have disgraced the most renowned champions of Scottish history, such as Archibald Bell-the-Cat, Robert the Bruce,

Or Wallace wight or Gilbert Hay.
Gentles, my tale is said.

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T was a pleasant evening, and I

IT

ran through the garden and along the narrow path that wound down the cliff to the beach. I held in my hand the flowers he had given me, and the soft breeze that tossed my hair over my face was laden with their perfume. I was so happy-I did not ask myself why, but a new and strange sense of blessedness was throbbing in my heart; and as I stood still and looked at the great sea stretched out before me, - at the gorgeous calm of the August sunset, -I felt as I had never felt since I was a little child, saying my prayers at my mother's knees.

I wandered along close to where the waves came rippling over the red pebbles. The dark rocks looked glorified in the western radiance, and the feathery clouds floated dreamily in the blue space, as if they were happy too. How strange it was that the beauty of the world had never spoken to my heart till that evening!

I climbed to my favourite seat in the recess of that great black rock which abutted on the sea even at ebb of tide, and where the fantastic peaks of brown stone rise on all sides save where the incessant beating of the waves have worn them away. All the world was shut out, save ocean and sky; and in the vast mysterious sea heaving in the glow reflected from the heavens, I seemed to find a sympathy with the great happiness that thrilled within me. My hands clasped over the flowers,-I raised my head to the still heaven where a quiet star seemed watching me,and a thanksgiving rose from my very soul to the God who had made the world so fair, and me so happy!

Gentle thoughts arose in my mind:-I thought of my dead mother, and of the great love I had borne her, which, since she died had lain dormant in my heart-till now! Ah, how that heart leaped at those little words whispered to itself. I thought of my olden self-of what I had been but two short weeks before, with a kind of remorse, chastened by pity. If I had had any one to love during all these years, I thought, I should surely never have become

LOVE.

the woman I was-whom people called unbending-austere-and cold. Cold! Little they guessed of the passionate yearning for love that had for so long been rudely crushed back into my desolate heart, till all

its tenderer feelings were, from their very strength, turning into poison. Little they knew of the fierce impulses subdued-the storms of emotion oftentimes concealed beneath that frigid reserve they deemed want of feeling. But I had always been misunderstood, and harshly judged-I had always been lonelyuncared for unsympathized with. Till now!

Now I had some one to lovesome one who cared for my love, and who loved me again, as I knew, I felt assured he loved me, though no lover's word or vow had ever passed between us. How holy this new happiness made me! How it sanctified and calmed the troubled heart, so restless, so stormy in its unsatisfied longing heretofore-restoring to it the innocent repose it had not known since it ceased to be a child's heart and became a woman's!

How tenderly I felt to all the world-to my very self, even! I looked down into a deep pool of water formed by a break in the rock: the dark waters gave to my view my face, with its firm, hard outlines, the large steadfast eyes, and the black hair which I loved, because yesterday Geoffrey had said it was beautiful. I took a curl tenderly into my hand-kissed it-and felt my glad tears fall on it:-what a child I was!

The sunset was fading when I returned home. As I ascended the cliff, I saw a figure that I knew, leaning over the shrubbery gate-a head bent forward with waving hair tossed in his own careless fashion over his brow. His voice reached my ears at the same moment :

I am watching for you, Bertha; you truant, to stay away so long!'

Who had ever watched for me before? Who had ever taken such note of my absence, or thought the time long when I was away? I felt all this as I quietly pursued my way towards him; keeping my eyes

fixed on the rugged pathway, not daring-God help me!-to look up at him when I knew his gaze was on my face.

He opened the gate for me, drew my arm within his, and we slowly walked towards the house.

'We have had visitors this evening,' said he; and one of them remains with Mrs. Warburton tonight. A Miss Lester;-do you know her ?'

'I have heard my father speak of her, but I have never seen her.'

'Mr. Lester, it seems, knew my father in his young days,' he resumed, ' and claimed acquaintance with me on that ground. He is a courtly, precise, well-expressed elderly gentleman of the old school. I like him;-a real, thorough-bred formalist now-a-days is so rare.'

He idly switched with his hand the flower-laden branches of the syringa trees we were sauntering among.

Mrs. Warburton'-in speaking to me he never called my stepmother by any other name-'Mrs. Warburton is going back with Miss Lester to-morrow, to stay two or three days with her at F. Then, Bertha, we can have the horses and gallop over the downs as we have often promised ourselves.'

I was silent, and he looked at me curiously.

'Ah-you will like that, little Bertha!' he cried, patting my hand which lay on his arm; 'your eyes are not so cautious as your tongue, and I can read what they say, quite well. Why are you hurrying on so fast? They are all in the greenhouse, looking at the miserable specimens of horticultural vegetation that you savages here call flowers. As if tender blossoms born under a Southern sky could survive when brought to a bleak precipice like this.'

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He looked at me again, in laughing surprise. What, Bertha! not a word to say for your Cornish Cliffs? I expected to have been fairly stunned with your indignation at my impertinence. Are you tired of defending the beloved scenes of your childhood, or do you begin to doubt my sincerity in abusing them ?'

I murmured something in reply.

'You know very well that I love them too,' he pursued-' that every old tor on the down, every rugged rock on the shore is dear to me. I little thought, when your father insisted on bringing me home with him, that I should spend such a happy time in this wild country. Still less that in the quiet, darkbrowed child I just remembered years ago, I should find a dear companion-a friend. Ah, Bertha, you yourself don't know how much you have been my friend-what good you have done me. I am a better man that I was a month ago. If I had had a mother or a sister all these years, I should have done more justice to the blessings God has given me. Nay, Bertha, don't go in yet. I tell you they are showing Miss Lester the poor little geraniums and things that Mrs. Warburton is so proud of; they wont be ready for tea this half hour, and it is so pleasant out here.'

We were standing on the terrace which skirted the southern side of the house. It was the highest part of the ground, and commanded a view of the coast for some miles. I shall never forget the sea as it looked that minute; the moon's first faint rays trembling over the waters

the white foam enlightening the broad colourless waste, where the waves were dashing over the rocks near shore. Again, my spirit was strangely softened within me, and hot tears rose to my eyes. He saw them, and gently pressed my hand in sympathy. He thought he understood what I felt, but he did not know-he never knew; Iscarcely comprehended myself, I was so bewildered by the fulness of happiness that was bounding within me.

'Bertha, you are chilled-you are shivering,' said Geoffrey, at length; 'perhaps it is too late for you to be out. The dew is falling, and your curls have quite drooped; so we will go in. Good bye to the moon-and sea-and stars!-and, ah, Bertha, good bye for to-night to our pleasant talk together;-now we must be sociable, and agreeable, and conventional,

I

suppose. Is it wrong to wish this intruding Miss Lester at-at Calcutta, or Hyderabad, or any other place sufficiently removed from our quiet family circle? No happy even

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