4 SCANDO-GOTHIC ART IN WESSEX. 



could see " an Angel come down from heaven, with a great 

 " chain in his hand, and lay hold on the dragon, that old 

 " Serpent, and bind him." * 



And what could better suit the Danish teniioerament than 

 to learn that " Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf ; in the morning 

 " he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the 

 " spoil." t 



The men whom we call Saxons, or Anglo-Saxons, who 

 swarmed over into this country in the fifth century, and were 

 largely converted to Christianity in the sixth, included Jutes 

 and Friesians as well as Angles. A warlike race they were, 

 but not artistic. Their coinage was rude in the extreme. { 

 Their architecture was barbarous, and their sacred edifices 

 were made of wood and covered with reeds and straw. 

 The cathedral church of York, that was constructed by 

 Edwin of Northumbria, fell to pieces in 40 years, and was 

 then rebuilt in stone by St. Wilfred. § And though they 

 continued to grow in skill, and were greatly helped and 

 instructed by foreign monks, to the very last, until the 

 Norman Conquest, their sculpture and their decorative 

 carvings, destitute of any trace of Folk-lore, not onh' lacked 

 the element of beauty, but were often truly grotesque. 



The Normans, however, were of Scandinavian descent, 

 and promptly on their arrival, as William of Malmesburj^ 

 tells us, " you might see churches rise in every village, and 

 " monasteries in the towns and cities, built after a style 

 " unknown before." || But even the Normans placed on their 

 earliest capitals the Hammer of Thor. ^ 



* Rev. XX., 1-2. t Gen. xlix., 27. 



J Akerman. 



§ Anno 670 ; i^ide Lingard, p. 141. 



II Videas iibique in v'illis ecclesias, in vicis et urbibus monasteria novo 

 Eedificandi genere consurgere. III. 246. 



^ The Tau-cross (T), the jiagan -Christian sign of consecration, as in 

 the early crypt at Canterbury, at St. Nicholas, Caen, &c. 



