The Tamworth Examiner and Working Men's Journal. — 1874-08-29 (Tamworth, Staffordshire, England)

IRELAND: HER HISTORY AND HER HOPES. CHAPTER IL  LUZ DANES.-THE DANES IN IRELAND.-111.00RESS  OF ARCHITECTIIItE.  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, ingot the mountains, beautiful, picturesque, and c inspiring' with clear rivers, deep bays, and sounding seas nursing freedom in this rocky lap of rugged beauty; and in their hardy fastnesses developing courage destined to subdue the world. And this warlike vigour, seconded by an enterprising and determined character, displayed by these Norsemen the world had early note of. From the time when leaving their northern home, they burst in most for. midable force on the notice of Europe in the year 112 before Christ, when they defeated general after general of the Romans, and who only succeeded in beefing , them back by the genius of Marius, the conqueror of ' many battles : from this time to their invasion of England, their c' - juest and final ascendency there under the name r 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 themselves of Sicily and Naples, and took and ruled over a part of Greece. They entered Switzerland, and established themselves in the best part of that country. They discovered and peopled Iceland, and from thence they reached Greenland and the Northern coasts of Amerisa, 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. Front Russia 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 them the key to the Scot fish mainland ; and they were not the men to neglect the advantages which arose from their position.  - Thus did these northern adventurers make themselves masters of the fairest and most fertile portions of Europe. But if these Scandinavians were the most brave, they were also the most cruel and sanguinary. "Piracy," to use the words of Gibbon, "was 1 their exercise, the trade, the glory, and the virtue of the Scandinavian youth." Nay, more; their future happiness in Walhalla depended 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 he himself had acquired were allowed to accompany the dead warrior to his grave. No wonder, thee, that is 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 march of the Scandinavians Ambition, thirst for