he most part, wiped out. They were both of the same
Teutonic stock, and therefore their languages were akin to one another
and their institutions very similar. The Danes of the north were for
some time fiercer and less easily controlled than the English of the
south, but there was little national distinction between them, and
what little there was gradually passed away.

15. =Eadwig. 955--959.=--Eadred was succeeded by Eadwig, the eldest
son of his brother Eadmund. Eadwig was hardly more than fifteen years
old, and it would be difficult for a boy to keep order amongst the
great ealdormen and earls. At his coronation feast he gave deep
offence by leaving his place to amuse himself with a young kinswoman,
AElfgifu, in her mother's room, whence he was followed and dragged back
by two ecclesiastics, one of whom was Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury.

16. =Dunstan.=--Dunstan in his boyhood had been attached to Eadmund's
court, but he had been driven off by the rivalry of other youths. He
was in no way fitted to be a warrior. He loved art and song, and
preferred a book to a sword. For such youths there was no place
amongst the fighting laymen, and Dunstan early found the peace which
he sought as a monk at Glastonbury. Eadmund made him abbot, but
Dunstan had almost to create his monastery before he could rule it.
Monasteries had nearly vanished from England in the time of the Danish
plunderings, and the few monks who remained had very little that was
monastic about them. Dunstan brought the old monks into order, and
attracted new ones, but to the end of his days he was conspicuous
rather as a scholar than as an ascetic. From Glastonbury he carried on
the work of teaching an ignorant generation, just as AElfred had done
in an earlier time. AElfred, however, was a warrior and a ruler first,
and then a teacher. Dunstan was a teacher first, and then a ruler.
Eadred took counsel with him, and Dunstan became thus the first
example of a class of men which afterwards rose to power--that,
namely, of ecclesiastical statesmen. Up to that time all who had
governed had been warriors.

17. =Archbishop Oda.=--Another side of the Church's work, the
maintenance of a high standard of morality, was, in the time of
Eadred, represented by Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury. The accepted
standard of morality differs in different ages, and, for many reasons,
it was held by the purer minds in the tenth century that celibacy was
nobler than marriage. If our