The great Danish invasion of England in the ninth century is one of those facts which meet us at every turn in the life of the world, raising again and again the deepest of all questions. At first sight it stands out simply as the triumph of brute force, cruelty, and anarchy, over civilization and order. It was eminently[83] successful, for the greater part of the kingdom remained subject to the invaders. In its progress all such civilization as had taken root in the land was for the time trodden out; whole districts were depopulated; lands thrown out of cultivation; churches, abbeys, monasteries, the houses of nobles and peasants, razed to the ground; libraries (such as then existed) and works of art ruthlessly burnt and destroyed. It threw back all Alfred’s reforms for eight years. To the poor East Anglian or West Saxon, churl or monk, who had been living his quiet life there, honestly, and in the fear of God, according to his lights—to him hiding away in the swamps of the forest, amongst the swine, running wild now for lack of herdsmen, and thinking bitterly of the sack of his home, a............