eir grandeur,--France under Charlemagne, England united by Egbert.
The good fortune of Egbert met its first check from these people, who
defeated his forces with great slaughter near Charmouth in Dorsetshire.
It generally happens that a new nation, with a new method of making
war, succeeds against a people only exercised in arms by their own civil
dissensions. Besides, England, newly united, was not without those
jealousies and that disaffection which give such great advantage to an
invader. But the vigilance and courage of Egbert repaired this defeat;
he repulsed the Danes; and died soon after at Winchester, full of years
and glory.

[Sidenote: Ethelwolf A.D. 838]

He left a great, but an endangered succession, to his son Ethelwolf, who
was a mild and virtuous prince, full of a timid piety, which utterly
disqualifies for government; and he began to govern at a time when the
greatest capacity was wanted. The Danes pour in upon every side; the
king rouses from his lethargy; battles are fought with various success,
which it were useless and tedious to recount. The event seems to have
been, that in some corners of the kingdom the Danes gained a few
inconsiderable settlements; the rest of the kingdom, after being
terribly ravaged, was left a little time to recover, in order to be
plundered anew. But the weak prince took no advantage of this time to
concert a regular plan of defence, or to rouse a proper spirit in his
people. Yielding himself wholly to speculative devotion, he entirely
neglected his affairs, and, to complete the ruin of his kingdom,
abandoned it, in such critical circumstances, to make a pilgrimage to
Rome. At Rome he behaved in the manner that suited his little genius, in
making charitable foundations, and in extending the Rome-scot or
Peter-pence, which the folly of some princes of the Heptarchy had
granted for their particular dominions, over the whole Kingdom. His
shameful desertion of his country raised so general a discontent, that
in his absence his own son, with the principal of his nobility and
bishops, conspired against him. At his return, he found, however, that
several still adhered to him; but here, too, incapable of acting with
rigor, he agreed to an accommodation, which placed the crown on the head
of his rebellious son, and only left to himself a sphere of government
as narrow as his genius,--the district of Kent, whither he retired to
enjoy an inglorious privacy with a wife whom he had marr