left to the piratical maritime warfare in which they soon became so distinguished; it was the natural result of the ambition of foreign conquest checked by the want of any territory lying open for them to invade and overrun. Still this was in its nature only an intermediate and temporary resource. The instinct of aggression, which it could only imperfectly gratify, it yet fostered, and was constantly strengthening and arming with new power for the full attainment of what it sought. The Danes, under this discipline, were becoming every day more warlike and formidable, and more capable of achieving foreign conquests, whenever they should make the attempt. On the other hand, the Franks and Saxons, whom they would have to drive before them, were, in the unassailed security of their rich and ample settlements, gradually losing the use of war and the power of defending the possessions they had gained. This was the state of circumstances when the Danes commenced, in the latter part of the eighth century, their descents upon the coasts of France, England, Scotland, and Ireland. These Northmen were now merely repeating what had been done by their kindred, the Franks and Saxons, three or four centuries before. They too, from mere plundering incursions, with which they had hitherto satisfied themselves, were about to rise in their turn to the grander operations of invasion, conquest, and colonization, now that occasion presented itself, and called them to that career. This was the proper consummation of their system of sea-kingship; the true end and development of their long course of piracy and desultory warfare. That was but the impatient restlessness of the animating passion repelled, baffled, and in some sort imprisoned; this was its free and natural action. The new path of enterprise, accordingly, immediately attracted to itself all the disposable courage, activity, and resources of the North. It was not left to the sea-kings alone; the most potent of those of the land joined the great national movement, which promised to add new realms to those they already possessed, or to enable them to exchange their niggardly
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