gious establishments of the Anglo-Saxons. In the
first place, they were themselves pagans, and they hated Christianity.
In the second place, they knew that these places of sacred seclusion
were often the depositories selected for the custody or concealment of
treasure; and, besides the treasures which kings and potentates often
placed in them for safety, these establishments possessed utensils of
gold and silver for the service of the chapels, and a great variety
of valuable gifts, such as pious saints or penitent sinners were
continually bequeathing to them. The Danes were, consequently, never
better pleased than when sacking an abbey or a monastery. In such
exploits they gratified their terrible animal propensities, both of
hatred and love, by the cruelties which they perpetrated personally
upon the monks and the nuns, and at the same time enriched their
coffers with the most valuable spoils. A dreadful tale is told of
one company of nuns, who, in the consternation and terror which they
endured at the approach of a band of Danes, mutilated their faces in a
manner too horrid to be described, as the only means left to them for
protection against the brutality of their foes. They followed,
in adopting this measure, the advice and the example of the lady
superior. It was effectual.

There was a certain abbey, called Crowland, which was in those days
one of the most celebrated in the island. It was situated near the
southern border of Lincolnshire, which lies on the eastern side of
England. There is a great shallow bay, called The Wash, on this
eastern shore, and it is surrounded by a broad tract of low and marshy
land, which is drained by long canals, and traversed by roads built
upon embankments. Dikes skirt the margins of the streams, and
wind-mills are engaged in perpetual toil to raise the water from the
fields into the channels by which it is conveyed away.

Crowland is at the confluence of two rivers, which flow sluggishly
through this flat but beautiful and verdant region. The remains of the
old abbey still stand, built on piles driven into the marshy ground,
and they form at the present time a very interesting mass of ruins.
The year before Alfred acceded to the throne, the abbey was in all its
glory; and on one occasion it furnished _two hundred_ men, who went
out under the command of one of the monks, named Friar Joly, to join
the English armies and fight the Danes.

The English army was too small notwithstan