foretold to him, and he was enjoined to accept the revelation which should then be made to him of a purer faith than that of his forefathers. Soon after this a battle took place between Redwald and Athelferth, in which the latter was slain, upon which Edwin not only recovered his own kingdom of Deira, but succeeded also to the whole of Northumbria. Edwin now became the most powerful king in Britain, and he obtained as his second wife Athelburh, daughter of Athelbert king of Kent. Athelbert, as we all know, had been converted by the preaching of Augustine; his family had now cordially received the Christian faith, and it was made a condition of the marriage not only that the princess should not be molested in her religion, but that she should have a Christian bishop with her, who was privately to administer its offices. There can be little doubt that Paulinus, one of the monks sent over by the pope to assist Augustine in his missionary labours, was selected for this office, with a view to the ultimate conversion of the northern Angles. It was, according to Bede, in the summer of the year 625, that the young Kentish princess, with her spiritual instructor, directed their steps towards the kingdom of the Northumbrians. The labours of the missionary were at first unsuccessful, for king Edwin was unwilling to desert the worship of his ancestors, and his people held aloof from new doctrines which had not yet received the approval of their chief. But in the year after the marriage new events occurred in the Northumbrian history, which exercised an important influence over the course of Edwin's future life. The king of the West Saxons, resolved to rid himself of the supremacy exercised over his kingdom by the powerful ruler of the Northumbrians, was preparing to revolt against it, but he determined first to have recourse to the arm of an assassin, and a messenger was sent with a pretended embassy, but in reality to slay the prince to whom his message was addressed. The treacherous assassin, whose name was Eamer, reached the court of Edwin, who was then residing in one of his palaces, or, as Bede expresses it, where was then his royal villa (ubi tunc erat villa rega lis), near the river Derwent, on Easter Sunday, in the year 626. The assassin was slain without having effected his purpose, but the king received a wound, and two of his nobles were killed in defending him. That night the queen was safely delivered of a daughter, in acknowledgment of which Edwin gave thanks to his gods; but Paulinus returned thanks to Christ, and assured the king that it was through his intercession that Athelburh owed her easy delivery. The bishop so far prevailed, that Edwin consented, no doubt at the persuasion of his queen, that the infant should be baptized, and this ceremony was performed on Whitsunday following, eleven other persons of the royal household receiving at the same time the baptismal rite. The king further promised that he would himself turn to the worship of the Redeemer if Paulinus would procure for him victory over his enemy the West-Saxon King. When at length Edwin returned victorious from the war, he at once so far fulfilled this promise that he abstained from offering worship to the idols himself, but he still, perhaps for political reasons, hesitated in proclaiming himself a Christian. Paulinus, we are told, when he perceived the King's continued reluctance, presented himself before him in private, and announced to him that he was a messenger directed by Heaven to command him to be a believer, reminding him, as a proof of his divine mission, of a vision which the king had bad in his youth, and which he had revealed to no man. Edwin was convinced, but he proposed, before openly accepting the Christian faith, to hold a meeting of his witan, that they might debate the matter in council, and all agree to be baptized together. It was a little before the Easter of the year 627, when Edwin assembled his chiefs in the villa beyond the Derwent, and asked them severally what they thought of the new doctrine and worship preached by the Christian bishop. Among those called to deliberate on this occasion was the chief of the King's priests, whose name was Cæfi, or, as it is written by Bede in the Northumbrian dialect, Coifi, and who was the first to deliver his opinion. Consider, O King," said the heathen priest, "what is this which is now 66 preached to us. For myself, I truly upon us the gifts of life, salvation, and everlasting happiness. Wherefore I recommend, O King, that we at once deliver to perdition and fire those temples and altars which we have consecrated in vain." Edwin gave his approbation to the proposal, but, perhaps still apprehensive of the consequences of such an act of desecration, he asked who would undertake to put it in execution, by profaning the altars and temples of the idols, with the inclosures that surrounded them. "I will do it,” exclaimed the priest, "for who is more fitting than myself to destroy the things I worshipped through ignorance, as an example to all others, through the knowledge which has been given me from the true God?" Thereupon he demanded of the King arms and a stallion, for it appears that it was not lawful for a priest to carry arms, or to ride any other animal but a mare; and having girt on a sword, and taken in his hand a spear, he mounted the stallion brought him by the King, and rode to the temple. A priest thus equipped was so strange a sight, that people collected from all quarters in the belief that he was mad. Nevertheless, he met with no opposition, and he no sooner reached the sacred spot than he profaned it by throwing his spear into it, and he ordered his companions to destroy and burn the temple and its inclosures. "This place of the idols," says Bede, writing in the year 731," is still shown, not far from York, to the eastward, beyond the river Derwent, and is now called Godmundingaham, where this high priest, inspired by the true God, profaned and destroyed the altars which he had consecrated himself." Soon after this event, on Easter day, which that year was the 12th of April, Edwin was baptised by Paulinus in the city of York. It is evident from Bede's account of these proceedings, that they all took place within a small compass; it was probably but a short distance from the King's villa to the site of Cæfi's temple. Tradition in Bede's time, who was born not more than forty-five years after the event, could not be wrong in identifying the site of the temple with Godmundingaham, and there can be no doubt that the place thus named was the modern Godmanham. The church of Godmanham is supposed to occupy the site of the temple-and we can easily imagine the erection of a Christian church on such a spot. The present building is an early Norman structure of some architectual interest. The arch between the chancel and the choir is flattened at the top, as though it had given way after it was built, and the pilasters which support it lean slightly outwards. Several instances of such arches of the Norman period have been observed in different parts of the country, and, as I believe all the stones of the arch seem never to have formed part of a semicircle, it remains yet to be ascertained whether the form they now have was the result of design or accident. The capitals which support the arch are of a design which is not usual-one of them is given in the accompanying cut. In one corner of the church is a very rudely formed early Norman font, which the sanguine antiquary, Dr. Stukeley, believed to be the identical font in which king Edwin was baptised, forgetting that that ceremony was performed not at Godmanham but in York. The church stands, as I have said before, on an elevated knoll, and there is an apparent slight vallum round the churchyard which is probably the remains of an old hedge-row. At about a hundred yards direct south of the church, in a field on the other side of the vicarage, are some extenGENT. MAG. VOL. XL. sive and very strange-looking earthworks. They occupy the brow of the hill, overlooking a rather deep valley or comb, at the bottom of which flows a copious stream of water, which rises a little above, and flows down to the town of Market Weighton. The earthworks just alluded to have been supposed to be the remains of Cæfi's temple. They give one at the first glance the notion of a large square inclosure, with a fortified entrance running down the bank towards the stream; but the interior of the inclosure is filled with mounds, and, on examining it more minutely, the whole presents such an appearance of confusion that we are led to acknowledge that it may after all be nothing but the remains of a modern chalk pit. Such is, at all events, the opinion of Mr. Roach Smith, who commenced some excavations on the far side of it, and discovered some ruins which he judged to be medieval. Before we proceed any further let me correct the extraordinary statements which have been made on the derivation of the name by topographers and local historians. On no subject perhaps has such a mass of ignorant nonsense been given to the world as on the derivations of names of places in this country. Bede has been quoted as stating that the name Godmundingaham means a place of idols; but the venerable father of Saxon history knew his mother tongue far too well to have made any such statement. Like all other names of this form-and they are the most numerous class we have-this name is a simple designation of the first Saxon, or rather Angle, possessors of the locality; and its only possible meaning is the ham or home (residence) of the Godmundings, or descendants of Godmund. Who Godmund was-whether he was one of the chiefs who came in the expeditions to Britain, or whether he was some older hero in the country from which the Angle settlers came, or whether again he may have been the head of a race of priests-is a question which it would be in vain to attempt to solve. When Mr. Roach Smith made some partial excavations near the earthworks at Godmanham, he found at the distance of two or three fields behind them several barrows, and near them D a Roman road, which he traced to the shrubbery close to the house at Londesborough. It is still well developed in the pine-wood through which we pass in walking from Londesborough to Godmanham. When we consider therefore that Londesborough and Godmanham stood by the same Roman road, less than a mile apart, and that indications of a Roman villa are found at the former place, are we not justified in considering it possible that Londesborough itself may have been the site of Edwin's villa, where that interesting conference took place which is described above? We can then understand perfectly how, when the conference was terminated so remarkably, Cæfi called for horse and arms and rode over the in tervening hill to his idol temple on the other side. It is a supposition which cannot fail to give an additional interest to both localities in the mind of the visitor. The high grounds, in a long sweep behind both, are covered with large sepulchral tumuli. A very pleasant walk of somewhat less than a mile will take the visitor down the hill to Market Weighton, a town which probably derives its name from having stood on the old Roman road-Weg-tun, the town on the way; and he may thence proceed to York, unless he prefer returning through Lon lesborough Park to the station of Shipton, which is two miles nearer York by the railway line than the Market Weighton station. THE LADY NOVELISTS OF GREAT BRITAIN. ENDLESS have been the theories which writers in different periods have broached respecting the proper work of women it is, we believe, generally considered now to be a very tiresome subject. We do not think many men, or women either, doubt the distinctive character of the female mind,—that it is not made to do every sort of work that man can or may do, at least not in the same manner; but we cannot help suspecting that the sooner all these nice questions-as questions, as matters of argument, of limitation, rule, and dictation are dropped the better. Men are never so near being morally and divinely right as when they content themselves with enjoying and ministering to what is good, with no theoretical reference to sex at all; and woman is surely most womanly in the highest sense, most gentle, fervent, and sincere, when she is thinking least about the matter. So with respect to the question of which among women should write, and what they should write, we have heard and read a large amount of fluent nonsense, as it has appeared to us,-such as that wives and mothers may write novels, but single women may not; and that, in short, all women whose position in society is, in the one respect of being unmarried, isolated, should not increase that isolation by such a self centreing thing as authorship of any kind. On these and other similar discussions we have only one remark to make,-that they really are very useless; that whenever a woman feels she has something to say which may do good, even to the lower extent of giving pleasure, she will generally find means of saying it, and had much better not be hindered. Mere cessation of authorship, we suspect, will do but little in correcting those tendencies of which authorship is a sign. Let the novel, poem, or essay be written, and let the public criticise it freely. Our conclusion still is that the grandest, wisest, simplest thing man or woman can do is to obey any strong clear call of duty towards God or man; to express that which has been brought home to the mind in a truthful, unexaggerative way, if it be a case in which writing seems the most natural instrument for the conveyance of what they have to say; to hope, humbly but firmly, that a few words of theirs may be the inspirers of deeds-to look indeed upon the smallest self-sacrificing deed as worth more than many books-but still not to disparage any vocationspoken, written, or acted out. As a general rule, we do not much wonder that men have come to look with distrust on woman's championship of social questions in the way of argu ment. They do often, certainly, go beyond the mark. They are apt to bring prominently forward all those mere off-sets from the main subject which a sound lawyer or moderately wise man would leave out of the discussion as apt to divert attention from the main point, and put clear logic out of court. And then the bravery of women, allied though it may be to many noble qualities, is against them. When they talk, as sometimes they do, in the most irritating manner of man's cowardice, it ought to be noted how often they themselves provokingly carve out new and hard work for him by their own rashness and one-sidedness. Taking willingly a credit which men are rather too ready to resign-of being more religious than their brothers or husbands, they do and say more things that put practical religion in jeopardy than those brothers or husbands would ever dream of. In fact, in matters of reasoning they are really harder upon their friends than their foes, for the magnanimity of woman's nature makes her peculiarly anxious to be generous and candid to antagonists. Hence we often find her more liberal towards works of dangerous tendency than towards those which, having a much securer foundation, are a little straitened and narrow in their outward form. One cannot but be struck, meanwhile, with the great increase in quantity, and general improvement in the quality, of NOVELS written by women. We are quite aware that every sort of evil may steal into our houses under the guise of an interesting fiction; that broad, coarse novels of the Fielding and Smollett kind are not what we have to dread, but rather the insidious poison of false sentiment or the novelties of great assumptions, passing unquestioned because of the glare which surrounds them. Nothing, however, of this kind moves us from our belief that novel-writing is quite one of the legitimate occupations of women. They cannot, indeed, fetch up materials from the haunts into which a Dickens or Bulwer may penetrate. They may in vain try to grapple with the more complicated difficulties of many a man's position and career; but, as far as they go-and often they can and do go far -they are admirable portrayers of character and situation. They know -there is no denying it a great deal about men. Brothers, friends, husbands, open to them widely, in many cases, the doors of their hearts. They are allowed to see much of that inner life. They see what is merely small and conventional, but also what is lofty and simple. And then how much is the store of woman's ideas enlarged by the mingling of other literatures with our own! The grave old Roman culture we never wish to see neglected; we feel its value to the mind: but an Englishwoman must now, to some extent, be also European, American, Asiatic, nay, Australian. Nor can she shut herself up here at home, except by violence, in the Churchwoman's, or the Dissenter's, or the Catholic's circles of thought. With all these facilities-with the means of high religious and moral cultivation within her reach-with a public ready to read, thankful to be amusedwith no more than a fair share of criticism to apprehend-why should not woman write fiction admirably well? Bear witness to a woman's power, most wonderful Consuelo! Stand forward, earnest, inspired, duteous, magnanimous "Uncle Tom," and say what there is, what long-standing system of wickedness, that may not be shaken to its centre by the touch of a woman's hand! Nor can we agree to stop our ears against the voices of the past. We remember the beauty and deep pathos of Mrs. Inchbald. We remember Jane and Anna Maria Porter, who, when they left ordinary life behind, and treated of characters safely removed from the then English public by time and distance, made the prettiest romances about them imaginable. The general strain of Mrs. Opie's novels we are compelled to own was feeble, but she surely worked up some of her scenes with an even terrible power, as in "Murder will Out," "The Ruffian Boy," and the maniac scene in "The Father and Daughter." Mrs. Radcliffe, surely, that great dealer in mys One of those dearly beloved sisters of ours in America of whom we have recently been hearing so much, has, we find, given death and burial to our bright, kindly, happy friend (never so happy and kindly as now), Mrs. Opie. The spire of her native town's |