sixty years before, when the flower of the English gentry perished at the
fatal battle of Assingdune? If he and his half-barbarous host had
conquered, the civilisation of Britain would have been thrown back,
perhaps, for centuries. But it was not to be.

England _was_ to be conquered by the Norman; but by the civilised, not
the barbaric; by the Norse who had settled, but four generations before,
in the North East of France under Rou, Rollo, Rolf the Ganger--so-called,
they say, because his legs were so long that, when on horseback, he
touched the ground and seemed to gang, or walk. He and his Norsemen had
taken their share of France, and called it Normandy to this day; and
meanwhile, with that docility and adaptability which marks so often truly
great spirits, they had changed their creed, their language, their
habits, and had become, from heathen and murderous Berserkers, the most
truly civilised people of Europe, and--as was most natural then--the most
faithful allies and servants of the Pope of Rome. So greatly had they
changed, and so fast, that William Duke of Normandy, the
great-great-grandson of Rolf the wild Viking, was perhaps the finest
gentleman, as well as the most cultivated sovereign, and the greatest
statesman and warrior in all Europe.

So Harold of Norway came with all his Vikings to Stamford Bridge by York;
and took, by coming, only that which Harold of England promised him,
namely, "forasmuch as he was taller than any other man, seven feet of
English ground."

The story of that great battle, told with a few inaccuracies, but told as
only great poets tell, you should read, if you have not read it already,
in the "Heimskringla" of Snorri Sturluson, the Homer of the North: