THE AUGUSTAN AGE AND THE LATER ANGLO-SAXON CIVILISATION.


The slight pause in the long course of Danish warfare which occurred
during the vigorous administration of Dunstan, affords the best
opportunity for considering the degree of civilisation reached by the
English in the last age before the Norman Conquest. Our materials for
such an estimate are partly to be found in existing buildings,
manuscripts, pictures, ornaments, and other archæological remains, and
partly in the documentary evidence of the chronicles and charters, and
more especially of the great survey undertaken by the Conqueror's
commissioners, and known as Domesday Book. From these sources we are
enabled to gain a fairly complete view of the Anglo-Saxon culture in the
period immediately preceding the immense influx of Romance civilisation
after the Conquest; and though some such Romance influence was already
exerted by the Normanising tendencies of Eadward the Confessor, we may
yet conveniently consider the whole subject here under the age of Eadgar
and Æthelred. It is difficult, indeed, to trace any very great
improvement in the arts of life between the days of Dunstan and the days
of Harold.

In spite of constant wars and ravages from the northern pirates, there
can be little doubt that England had been slowly advancing in material
civilisation ever since the introduction of Christianity. The heathen
intermixture in the North and the Midlands had retarded the advance but
had not completely checked it; while in Wessex and the South the
intercourse with the continent and the consequent growth in culture had
been steadily increasing. Æthelwulf of Wessex married a daughter of Karl
the Bald; Ælfred gave his daughter to a count of Flanders; and Eadward's