The South Staffordshire Examiner. — 1874-08-29 (Wednesbury, West Midlands, England)

DANES.—THE DANES IN IRELAND.—PROORESS OF ARCHITECTURE. It is certain that the Scandinavians or Danes played a very important part in the early history of Europe. Planted in the noble and wild regions of the North, c•n.•ngst the mountains, beautiful, picturesque, and alio inspiring; with clear rivers, deep hays, and sounding seas nursing freedom in this rocky lap of rugtired beauty ; and in their hardy fastnesses developing courage destined to subdue the world. And this warlike vigour, seconded by an enterprising awl determined character, displayed by these Norsemen the world hail early note of. From the time when leaving their northern home, they burst in most for. addable force on the notice of Europe in the year 112 before Christ, whoa they defeated general after general of the Romans, and who only succeeded in beating them bock by the genius of Marins, the conqueror of many battles from this time to their invasion of England, their ci,quest and final ascendency there under the mime • Normans, embracing a period of ' more than a thousand years, did these people , keep up their ascendency and vigour of character above the rest of the races of Europe. Their conquests were rapid they contended, as we have shown, with the colossal power of Rome; they subdued England, seized on Normandy, laid siege to Paris, and made extensive inroads into Belgium and Spain. They possessed them. selves of Sicily and Naples, and took and ruled over a part of Greece. They entered Switzerland, and estiblishmi themselves in the best part of that country. They discovered and peopled Iceland, and from thence they reached Greenland and the Northern coasts of Amerien, five hundred years before Columbus, to which they gave the name of Vineland. They traversed the coasts of the White Sea, and seized on Russia, which country they ruled for some hundreds of years as Czars. From Ens,ai they made their way to the Black Sea, and in 806 appeared before Constantinople ; but their attacks were bought off by the effeminate emperors, who engaged them at a high cost as guards. The shores of Scotland were also made familiar with these Northern rovers. The maritime facilities of the Orkney and Shetland Islands were not overlooked or disregarded by these kings of the sea. They made these remote islands their chief strongholds, and their first work was—if the chroniclers speak the truth—to exterminate the original inhabitants, and thus remove all danger of opposition. But be that as it may, the position they gained was fixed and enduring. and gave then, the key to the Scot tish mainland ; and they were not the men to neglect ! the advantages which arose from their position. Thus did these northern adventurers make them• selves musters of the fairest and most fertile portions of Europe. But if these Scandinavians were the mmt brave, they were also the most cruel and sanguinary. "Piracy;' to use the words of Gibbon, was their exercise, the trade, (ho glory, and the virtue of the youth." Nay, more their future happiness in Walhalla dependesl. on the success and  number of their murders and robberies. For so much wealth as a man brought with him to the funeral pile, the like pleasure he enjoyed in a future life ; no inherited, but only such riches or treasures as be himself  hat aoinired were allowed to accompany the dead warrior to his grave. No wonder, then, that a burning country, the highways strewn with the victims of massacre, violated women, the husband expiring on his own threshold near his wife, the infant torn from its mother's bosom and slain before her eyes to increase her screams, is the. picture drawn of the