Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/99

JARLS ERIC AND SVEIN. 89 it by fits with extreme violence and impetus ; often advancing largely towards a successful conclusion ; but never, for thirteen years yet, getting it concluded. He possessed long since all England north of Watling Street. That is to say, Northumberland, East Anglia (naturally full of Danish settlers by this time), were fixedly his; Mercia, his oftener than not; Wessex itself, with all the coasts, he was free to visit, and to bum and rob in at discretion. There or elsewhere, Ethelred the Unready had no battle in him whatever; and, for a forty years after the beginning of his reign, England excelled in anarchic stupidity, murderous devastation, utter misery, platitude, and sluggish con- temptibility, all the countries one has read of. Ap- parently a very opulent country, too ; a ready skill in such arts and fine arts as there were; Svein's very ships, they say, had their gold dragons, top-mast pen- nons, and other metallic splendours generally wrought for them in England. * Unexampled prosperity' in the manufacture way not unknown there, it would seem ! But co-existing with such spiritual bankruptcy as was also unexampled, one would hope. Read Lu- pm (Wulfstan), Archbishop of York's amazing Sermon