obliterated whatever there was of human infirmity in their mutual intercourse by the merit of their common achievements. Each by turn could claim pre-eminence in the contest of sanctity and learning. In the schools of science England has no name to rival Erigena in originality, or St. Virgil in freedom of thought; nor (among its canonised women) any saintly virgin to compare with St. Bridget; nor, although it has 150 saints in its calendar, can it pretend to equal that Irish multitude which the Book of Life alone is large enough to contain. Nor can Ireland, on the other hand, boast of a doctor such as St. Bede, or of an apostle equal to St. Boniface, or of a martyr like St. Thomas; or of so long a catalogue of royal devotees as that of the thirty male or female Saxons who, in the course of two centuries, resigned their crowns; or as the roll of twenty-three kings, and sixty queens and princes, who, between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, gained a place among the saints.'—Cardinal Newman,

    Historic Sketches

   , 'The Isles of the North,' pp. 128-9.

    Page 16

   .

   This image will be found in the description of a Scandinavian sea-fight in a remarkable book less known than it deserves to be,

    The Invasion

   , by Gerald Griffin, author of

    The Collegians

   .

   The Saxons were, however, in early times as much pirates as the Danes were at a later.

    Page 18

   . The achievement of Hastings had been rehearsed at a much earlier period by Harald.

    Page 39

   .

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