and Danes continued for some centuries to agitate the island.  The particular details of these contentions have in these days, in a great measure, lost their interest for all but professed historical scholars.  It is only the history of great leading events and the lives of really extraordinary men, in the annals of early ages, which can now attract the general attention even of cultivated minds.  The vast movements which have occurred and are occurring in the history of mankind in the present century, throw every thing except what is really striking and important in early history into the shade.

The era which comes next in the order of time to that of Alfred in the course of English history, as worthy to arrest general attention, is, as we have already said, that of William the Conqueror.  The life of this sovereign forms the subject of a separate volume of this series.  He lived two centuries after Alfred’s day; and although, for the reasons above given, a full chronological narration of the contentions between the Saxon and Danish lines of kings which took place during this interval would be of little interest or value, some general knowledge of the state of the kingdom at this time is important, and may best be communicated in connection with the story of Godwin.

Godwin was by birth a Saxon peasant, of Warwickshire.  At the time when he arrived at manhood, and was tending his father’s flocks and herds like other peasants’ sons, the Saxons and the Danes were at war.  It seems that one of Alfred’s descendants, named Ethelred, displeased his people by his misgovernment, and was obliged to retire from England.  He went across the Channel, and married there the sister of a Norman chief named Richard.  Her name was Emma.  Ethelred hoped by this alliance to obtain Richard’s assistance in enabling him to recover his kingdom.  The Danish population, however, took advantage of his absence to put one of their own princes upon the throne.  His name was Canute.  He figures in English history, accordingly, among the other English kings, as Canute the Dane, that appellation being given him to mark the distinction of his origin in respect to the kings who preceded and followed him, as they were generally of the Saxon line.

It was this Canute of whom the famous story is told that, in order to rebuke his flatterers, who, in extolling his grandeur and power, had represented to him that even the elements were subservient to his will, he took his stand upon the sea-shore when the tide was coming in, with his flatterers by his side, and commanded the rising waves not to approach his royal feet.  He kept his sycophantic courtiers in this ridiculous position until the encroaching waters drove them away, and then dismissed them overwhelmed with confusion.  The story is told in a thousand different ways, and with a great variety of different embellishments, according to the fancy of the several narrators; all that there is now any positive evidence for believing, however, is, that probably some simple incident of the kind occurred, out of which the stories have grown.