o
carry him into any extravagances. He is everywhere clear and
simple--sometimes rises into eloquence; and always displays a close
and searching knowledge of his subject.

From the end of the eighth century till the time of the Norman
Conquest, the restless chiefs of Denmark and Norway were continually
in the practice of making piratical expeditions to our shores. They
committed terrible devastations, and made many settlements, almost
exclusively on the eastern coast. Finally, as is well known, we had a
brief succession of Danish kings in England, including the magnanimous
Canute. When we look at the quiet people now inhabiting Denmark and
Norway, we are at a loss to understand whence came or where resided
that spirit of reckless daring which inspired such a system of
conquest, or how it came so completely to die out; but the explanation
is, that the Northmen of those days were heathens, animated by a
religion which made them utterly indifferent to danger. Whenever they
became Christianised, they began to appreciate life like other men,
and ceased, of course, to be the troublers they had once been. Mr
Worsaae draws a line from London to Chester--the line of the great
Roman road (Watling Street)--to the north of which the infusion of
Scandinavian population is strong, and their monuments abundant. A
vast number of names of places in that part of the island are of
Danish origin--all ending in _by_, which in Danish signifies a town,
as Whitby (the White Town), Derby (Deoraby, the town of Deer), Kirby
(the church town), &c.--all ending in _thwaite_, which signifies an
isolated piece of land--all ending in _thorpe_ (Old Northern, a
collection of houses separated from some principal estate)--all ending
in _naes_, a promontory, and _ey_ or _oee_, an island. _Toft_, a field;
_with_, a forest; _beck_, a streamlet; _tarn_, a mountain-lake;
_force_, a waterfall; _garth_, a large farm; _dale_, a valley; and
_fell_, a mountain, are all of them common elements of names of places
in England, north of the line above indicated, and all are
Scandinavian terms. The terminations _by_, _thwaite_, and _thorpe_,
are still common in Denmark.

Mr Worsaae found many memorials of the Northmen in London: for
example, the church of St Clement's Danes, where this people had their
burial-place; the name _Southwark_, which is 'unmistakably of Danish
or Norwegian origin;' St Olave's Church there, and even Tooley Street,
which is a corruption of the