pes and joys, of sorrows and of tears;
They are the tomb-stones time will ne'er decay,
Although the moss will gather with the years.

* * * * *

EARLY ENGLISH POETRY.

By Professor Edwin H. Sanborn, LL.D.

Our Saxon ancestors when they conquered England, were rude, barbarous,
and cruel. The gods of their worship were bloodthirsty and revengeful.
Odin, their chief divinity, in his celestial hall drank ale from the
skulls of his enemies. In the year 596, the Monk Augustine, or Austin,
was sent by Pope Gregory to attempt their conversion to Christianity. He
and his associates were so successful that on one occasion ten thousand
converts were baptized in one day. Of course their conversion was
external and nominal. They still clung to their old superstitions and
customs. But with the new religion came new ideas.

Manuscripts were circulated; monasteries and schools were founded, and
learning was somewhat diffused. The Saxon language is marked by three
several epochs:

1st. From the irruption of the Saxons into Britain, A.D. 449, to the
invasion of the Danes, including a period of 330 years.

2d. The Danish-Saxon period, continuing to the Norman conquest, A.D.
1066.

3d. The Norman-Saxon era, running down to the close of Henry II's reign.
Of the first period, but a single specimen remains, and that a quotation
by King Alfred; of the 2d period, numerous specimens both in verse and
prose are extant; with the last period, the annals of English poetry
commence.

The three dialects of these three literary epochs illustrate fully the
changes which the old Saxon tongue underwent during the five centuries
of its growth into the modern English.

Learning was chiefly confined to the church, during the dark ages; of
course, the great lights of Saxon England were prelates, except Alfred,
and most of them wrote in Latin.

The venerable Bede (born 673, died 735), as he is styled, who wrote
in the eighth century, was a profoundly learned man for those times.
His writings embrace all topics then included in the knowledge of the
schools or the Church. His works were published at Cologne, in 1612,
in eight folio volumes. Another of the ornaments of this century was
Alcuin, librarian and pupil of Egbert, Archbishop of York. He enjoyed
a European reputation; was invited to France, by Charlemangne, to
superintend his own studies; and was thought by some to have been the
founder of