groves, flowery plains and pleasant streams, are absent from the picture.

It is the object of the present work to offer to the Young a series of moral and instructive tales, each founded on some striking authentic fact in the annals of their own country, in which royal or distinguished children were engaged; and in which it is the Author's wish to convey, in a pleasing form, useful and entertaining information illustrative of the manners, customs, and costume of the era connected with the events of every story: to which is also added, an Historical Summary, which the Author recommends to the attention of the juvenile reader, as containing many interesting particulars not generaly to be met with in abridged histories.

HISTORICAL TALES

GUTHRED.

THE WIDOW'S SLAVE.

WILL it be credited by the youthful reader, that in this now free and happy land, slaves were once bought and sold with as little remorse as cattle are in the present day transferred from one master to another? Strange and revolting as it must appear to every lover of his country, such was once the existing practice, not only in the remote ages, when the darkness of heathen barbarism overshadowed the British islands, but even in the reign of the benevolent and enlightened Alfred, under whose auspices law and justice were established in form so pure and equitable, that many of his institutions have been handed down to us from our ancestors as the noblest legacy in their power to bestow.

Civilization, it is true, made a great progress during the era of this accomplished monarch, but he had so many difficulties to contend with, and so many prejudices to overcome, that it is not to be wondered if some abuses remain unreformed, and, among others, this inhuman traffic.

There were few occupiers of land in those days who were not possessed of thralls, or domestic slaves, who were distinguished from the hired servants, by the degrading badge of an iron collar,

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on which was inscribed the name of the hapless bondman, with the notification that he was the purchased or the born thrall, whichever it might happen to be, of such a person, of such a place.

The tale I am about to relate, which is founded on an authentic historical fact of this nature, is an illustrative sketch of the manners and customs of the Anglo Saxons and Danes, during that glorious period of our annals, the age of Alfred the Great, in whose reign its events took place.

One bright autumnal morning, about eleven o'clock, the hour at which our Saxon ancestors usually took their principal meal, just as the family and serving-folk of the Saxon franklin*, Selwood, were seating themselves at the well covered board, a loud barking from the watch dogs that guarded the homestead, answered by the low, but more angry, growling of the household curs under the table, announced the approach of strangers.

Selwood, who was beginning to carve for his household, paused to listen, and grasped his huge knife with a firmer hold, as though he meditated using it as a weapon of defence in case of approaching danger. His serving-folk, who, according to the custom of those days, sat at the same table with their master, but below the salt, started from their seats on the rough oaken benches that surrounded the lower end of the board, and laid hand on scythes, flails, or reaping hooks, exclaiming in alarm, "The Danes be upon us!"

• A Saxon Freeholder, or gentleman, who was possessed of one or more bydes of land. A hyde contains 100 acres.

So contiguous indeed was the town of Whitingham, near which the farm and homestead of Selwood were situated, to the Danelagh, or Danish colony, that had established itself in great power in Northumberland, that perpetual fear existed in the minds of the franklin and his household, lest their dangerous neighbours should at any time think proper to break the hollow truce then subsisting between the Saxons and Danes, and pay him one of their predatory visits.

The Danish settlements were, in fact, neither more nor less than so many formidable hordes of rapacious banditti, always ready to give and take offence, and on the look-out for plunder. They were a cruel, faithless race, in whose promises no reliance could be placed, and whose only occupation consisted in rapine and deeds of blood.

The industrious habits and peaceful employments of the Saxons, who having become naturalized to the soil, had abandoned the warlike manners of their fierce ancestors for the useful pursuits of the shepherd and the husbandman, were sorely interrupted by the incursions and ravages of the "black strangers," as the invading Danes were emphatically styled, from the sable hue of the vessels which brought this unwelcome swarm of northern robbers to the shores of England, where they first arrived in the reign of Egbert, and from that time contrived to obtain a footing in the country, and being yearly reinforced with fresh bands of adventurers from the coasts of Denmark and Norway, they continued

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to gain strength, and at length establishing themselves, side by side as it were, by the Saxons, rendered themselves the terror of the peacefully disposed, and the scourge of the whole country. 'They are always before us," says the Saxon Chronicler; we always see the horizon reddened with flame, we always hear the tramp of war."

At the period of Alfred's accession to the throne, nine pitched battles were fought in one year, between the English and the Danes, besides skirmishes and private conflicts innumerable. Sometimes the Danes were defeated, but after each reverse they appeared to redouble their activity, and actually increased in power. "If thirty thousand are slain in one day," said the despairing Saxons, "there will be double that number in the field to-morrow." Sometimes, when the Saxons found themselves unable to cope with their formidable opponents, they were unwise enough to endeavour to purchase a shameful peace with gold; but the bribe was no sooner in the possession of the greedy barbarians, than they violated the dearbought treaty, and committed all sorts of violence, for the sake of extorting fresh sums of money.

The appearance of a Danish holda, or chief, approaching the homestead of Selwood, though only attended by a boy of tender years, who was leading a brace of wolf-hounds in a leash, was sufficient to spread dismay through the dwelling.

There was an immediate consultation between Selwood and his wife, Winifred, as to whether they should treat the unwelcome visitor as an enemy, by