year 547 A.D. invaders from Northern Germany made the sixth permanent settlement in Britain. The southwestern counties of Scotland, between the rivers Tweed and Forth, were the districts where they landed. They were of the tribe of the Angles, and their leader was Ida.

§ 11. Such are the current details. Supposing them to be accurate, they only require a few additional facts to make them sufficient for the purposes of criticism. In the first place they require a notice of the different parts of Germany whence the three nations respectively came. Now, the current doctrines upon these points are as follows:

(1.) The geographical locality of the Jutes was the Peninsula of Jutland:

(2.) That of the Angles was the present Duchy of Sleswick :

(3.) That of the Saxons was a small tract to the north of the Elbe.

The correctness of all this being assumed, the further question as to the relation which the different immigrant tribes bore to each other finds place; and we may ask about the extent to which the Jute differed from the Angle, and also about the relations of the Angle and the Saxon to each other. Did they speak different languages? different dialects of a common tongue? or dialects absolutely identical? Did they belong to the same or to different confederations? Was one polity common to all? Were the civilizations similar?

Questions like these being answered, and a certain amount of mutual difference being ascertained, it then stands over to inquire whether any traces of this original difference are still to be found in the modern English. Are any provincial dialects Jute rather than Angle? or Angle rather than Saxon? Are certain local customs

Saxon rather than Angle, certain points of dialect Angle rather than Saxon? And, vice versa, are there to be found the characteristic differentia of the Jutes, in Kent, part of Sussex, and the Isle of Wight; those of the Saxons in Sussex, Essex, and Middlesex; and those of the Angles in Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Durham, and Northumberland, &c.?

Such, and such like, provided that the usual accounts are unimpeachably true, are the considerations to which they give rise. But, it must also be added, that, before these accounts can take the value of true and authentic history, a great many objections have to be removed. The present writer, along with others, hesitates to adopt either the date of A.D. 449, or the triple division into Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. Still less does he believe that the several districts of Germany, whence these three supposed populations respectively proceeded to Britain, have been finally determined. On the contrary, the date of the migration makes one subject for criticism, whilst the locality whence it originated makes another. Nor are these doubts unreasonable. It is as early as A.D. 449, when, according to the current chronology, Hengest and Horsa land on the Isle of Thanet; but it is as late as A.D. 597 before Christianity is introduced into the kingdom of Kent; the interval having been a period of darkness and fable. Again-It is as late as the eighth century before the work upon which the belief in the usual details of the early history of the Angles rests is composed. The reign of Ceolwulf began A.D. 729, and ended A.D. 737; and it is to Ceolwulf, king of Northumberland, that the Ecclesiastical History of the Venerable Beda is dedicated. It contains the usual details of the Anglo-Saxon history and ethnology; but it also contains a notice of the data upon which they are given-a notice which, if it fail to prove them absolutely untrustworthy,

is still sufficient to show that they are anything but conclusive.

§ 12. It was by special applications to his cotemporary ecclesiastics that Beda got his facts; each application being made for the history of some particular diocese or province.

a. For Kent, Albinus, abbot of Canterbury, was the chief authority. He forwarded, by a priest named Nothelm, such statements as "he had obtained from either the monuments of literature, or the tradition of the old men." He also gave notices of some of the districts conterminous with Kent.

b. For Wessex, Bishop Daniel "transmitted certain facts. in the Ecclesiastical History of his own province, along with some appertaining to the neighbouring country of Sussex and the Isle of Wight."

c. For Suffolk and Norfolk " part of the Ecclesiastical History was taken from either the writings or the traditions of the old men, and part from the narrative of the very reverend abbot Esau."

d. For Mercia in general the monks in Lestingham were the authorities; but

e. For the particular province of Lincoln, the evidence was separate "For what was done in the province of Lindisey as touching the faith in Christ, as well as the succession of the priests, I have gained my information from either the letters of the very reverend High Priest Cynibert or the vivá voce communications of living men."

f. For Northumberland, Beda collected his notices himself. His chief sources were vivá voce communications, and a life of St. Cuthbert, written at Lindisfarn.

§ 13. Next to the Ecclesiastical History of Beda, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle commands our attention. For the later years of the Anglo-Saxon period, it is our only

full and satisfactory document; so that its simple historical value is high. But, besides this, it is written in Anglo-Saxon; so that it has a philological value as well. Nevertheless, it cannot be taken as an historical authority for the Pagan period, or the period anterior to A.D. 597. For the Pagan, and it may be added for a much later, period, it presents several very suspicious elements.

a. Lappenberg remarks that, in the early history of the kingdom of Kent, the chief events occur at a regular period either of 8 years or some multiple of 8. Thus :

Just twenty-four years after Hengist, Esc, his son, dies. b. The proper names are not less suspicious than the dates. The names of the Anglo-Saxons who appear subsequent to the introduction of Christianity, the names that are found in the Anglo-Saxon charters, the names on the Anglo-Saxon coins, the names of undoubtedly real individuals, living under the light of history, are eminently well-marked in character. They are chiefly compounds, and their elements, though not always capable of a satisfactory interpretation, are evidently referable to the Anglo-Saxon language:-Elfwine, Eadulf, Elfheh, Sigelm, Cenwald, Beornstan, Oda, Wynsige, Wulfhun, Deoderd, Cynefers, Tidelm, Cynsige, Eadward, Escberht, Wired, Elfwald, Osferð, Aldred, Uhtred, Escberht, Elfstan, Ecberht, Ethelwulf, Æthelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, Elfred, Eadwerd, Ethelstan, Eadmund, Eadred, Eadwig, Eadgar, &c. Now, I will not say that no such names occur anterior to A.D. 597. A few such are to be found. But, as a general rule, the names that occur anterior to the introduction of Christianity are names which do not occur subsequently; and,

vice versa, the names which appear in the truly-historical times are not found in the doubtful period. There are no Hengists, Horsas, Escs, Cissas, Stufs, Ports, &c., when we come to the times of the Alfreds and Edwards, and no Alfreds and Edwards when we are amongst the Ports and Stufs, &c.

c. These early names are, in some cases, eponymic, i. e. names never borne by individuals at all, but coined by speculators in history, archæology, or genealogy, under the hypothesis that the denominations of certain tribes or places are accounted for by the supposition that certain individuals, identically or similarly named, originated them. In this way Hellen is the eponymus of the Hellenes, or Greeks; not that such a progenitor ever existed, but that some early speculator on the origin of the Greek nation conceived that he did, and accounted for a name and nation accordingly.

Beda's notice of the place of Horsa's death has a very eponymic look.

Translation.

Their first leaders are said to have been two brothers, Hengist and Horsa. Of these, Horsa was, afterwards, killed in wars by the Britons, and has, to this day, in the eastern parts of Kent, a monument marked by his name. But they were the sons of Wihtgils, whose father was Witta, whose father was Wecta, whose father was Woden, from whom the royal families of many countries derive their origin.

In the original.

Duces fuisse perhibentur eorum primi duo fratres Hengist et Horsa; e quibus Horsa, postea occisus in bello a Brittonibus, hactenus in Orientalibus Cantiæ partibus monumentum habet suo nomine insigne. Erant autem filii Victgilsi, cujus pater Vitta, cujus pater Vecta, cujus pater Voden, de cujus stirpe multarum provinciarum regium genus originem duxit. Hist. Eccl. i. 15.

Horsa's name (though suspicious) is less so than another hero's-Port's :

A.D. 501.-Hér cóm Port on

A.D. 501.-This year Port and

Bretene, and his ii suna Bieda his two sons, Bieda and Mægla, and Mægla mid ii scipum, on came to Britain with two ships, at