EDITHA, THE SWAN-NECKED. ENGLAND was happy yet and free under her Saxon kings. The unhappy natives of the land, the Britons of old time, long ago driven back into their impregnable fastnesses among the Welsh mountains, and the craggy and pathless wilds of Scotland, still rugged and hirsute with the yet uninvaded masses of the great Caledonian forest, had subsided into quiet, and disturbed the lowland plains of fair England no longer; and so long as they were left free to enjoy their rude pleasures of the chase and of internal welfare, undisturbed, were content to be debarred from the rich pastures and fertile corn-fields which had once owned their sway. The Danes and Norsemen, savage Jarls and Vikings of the North, had ceased to prey on the coasts of Northumberland and Yorkshire; the seven kingdoms of the turbulent and tumultuous Heptarchy, ever distracted by domestic strife, had subsided into one realm, ruled under laws, regular, and for the most part mild and equable, by a single monarch, occupied by one homogeneous and kindred race, wealthy and prosperous according to the idea of wealth and prosperity in those days, at peace at home and undisturbed from without; if not, indeed, very highly civilized, at least supplied with all the luxuries and comforts which the age knew or demanded—a happy, free, contented people, with a patri archal aristocracy, and a king limited in his prerogatives by the rights of his people, and the privileges of the nobles as secured by law. Such was England, when on the death of Hardicanute, Edward, afterward called the Confessor, ascended the throne by the powerful aid of Earl Godwin, and re-established the old Saxon dynasty on a base which seemed to promise both durability and peace. Had this Edward been in any sense a man, it is probable that the crown of England would have continued in the Saxon line, that the realm of England would have remained in the hands of an unmixed race, and that the great dominant people -most falsely named by an absurd misnomer Anglo-Saxon, since with the slightest possible coloring of the ancient British blood, they are the offspring purely of an intermingling of Saxon and Norman blood; owing to the former their stubborn pertinacity of will, to the latter their fiery energy, their daring enterprise and quick intellect-would never have sprung into existence to hold the balance of power, if not the absoluteness of sway on each side of the ocean, and in the four quarters of the globe. But he was not a man, only a monk—a miserable lay monk -a husband of Earl Godwin's lovely daughter, yet a fanatical celibatarian-not fit to be a king-not fit to be a man-not fit even to be a Saxon monk, when monks were men like Becket. Jealous of his Saxon nobles, he had recourse to Norman favorites, and England was already half a Norman province, and William of Normandy his favorite, until the counter jealousy of his nobles compelled him again to have recourse to Godwin, and his gallant sons, Harold, and Gurth, and Leofwin, who cleared the kingdom of the intrusive Norman courtiers, reestablished the Saxon constitution, and nominally as the minis ters and deputies of the weak king, but really as his guardians and governors, ruled England happily, well, and lawfully, in his stead. Godwin, meantime, had departed this life, full of years and honors. Edward, the nephew of Edward the Confessor, whom he had invited over from Hungary, and destined to be his successor, had departed also, leaving his son, Edgar Atheling, a minor, heir to his empty expectations and his noble blood. And now what little intellect there was and spirit in the monkking awoke, and he perceived, with that singular clearness of perception which sometimes seems to visit men, dull before and obtuse of intellect, when they are dying, that his people now would willingly adopt the Norman for a ruler, or submit to the sway of William the Bastard, to whom he had in past days. well nigh promised the succession of his kingdom. Therefore, of late, Harold, the son of Godwin, the flower of the whole Saxon race, and, in fact, their ruler, as the king's lieutenant and vicegerent, came to be looked upon by the whole Saxon population of the land, as their next Saxon king, in the to-be hereafter. The jealousies which had disturbed the mind of Edward had long since passed away; and Harold, whom he once had looked upon almost with the eyes of popular aversion, he now regarded almost as his own son. Yet still the Saxon hostages, Ulfroth, the youngest son of Godwin, and Harold's brother, and the still younger son of Swega-who, in the time of his mad distrust of his own countrymen, his unnatural predilection for the Normans, had been delivered for safe keeping into the hands of William of Normandy-still lingered melancholy exiles, far from the white cliffs of their native land. And now for the first time since their departure, did the aspect of affairs look propitious for their liberation; and Harold, brother of the one and uncle of the other, full of proud confidence in |