Their agriculture was sufficient to produce wheat and barley for general use. Orchards were cultivated ; and we find grapes, nuts, almonds, pears, and apples, men tioned as the produce of their gardens. They used hedges and ditches to enclose and divide their land. There was a law which decreed, that a ceorl should keep his land enclosed, both in winter and summer. They had ploughs, rakes, sickles, scythes, forks, and flails, very similar to our own ; and frequent mention is made of wind and water mills. From the penalties or dained by law for cutting down trees, it does not appear that their wood was over-abundant, a circumstance which may indirectly argue an advanced state of pas turage and agriculture. Yet this, though cited by wri ters on Anglo-Saxon history, as a proof to the above effect, is but an imperfect argument ; for the forests, which we know to have once overshadowed this coun try, have certainly decayed from other causes than the progress of agriculture ; and the remark may be not unlike that of the American, who admired the improved state of the coast of Ireland, from its being so perfectly cleared of trees. There are other proofs of Anglo Saxon culture, which supersede the use of such an ar gument.
Architecture flourished little among this people, even in their later period. Those ferocious tribes, who first expelled the Britons, had destroyed every structure of Roman erection, as dangerous rallying points for the miserable inhabitants, and they were too rude to be able to replace them by buildings of their own, which deserve the name of architecture. For two hundred years from their arrival, stone masonry was unknown; their very verb to build (which was getymbrian, i. e. to make of wood,) shews the materials which they were accustomed to use. The church at Durham, one of their most laborious erections, during the above period, was built of split oak, and covered with reeds. The first cathedral of stone was built at Lincoln by Paulinus, the bishop of York, somewhat before the middle of the seventh century, which was regarded as such a prodi gy, that miracles were thought to be practicable within its walls. The materials generally employed in this century were stones and turf for the walls, and wood and clay for the roof. In the succeeding century, we hear of a church at Hexham being erected of polished (probably hewn) stone, with columns and porticoes, and spiral windings without and within, and of great height. But though buildings of stone, with windows of glass, and other ornaments, were known at the end of the 7th centuiy, during the 8th and 9th they were still exceed ingly rare. Alfred himself, though magnificent and liberal in his taste, seems to have aimed at number and utility, rather than grandeur, in his buildings; or if he did erect any important edifices of stone, they must have perished in the general desolation which the Danes spread over England after his reign. His most famed cathedrals we know were constructed of wood.
The ornaments of churches, as early as the princes of the heptarchy, were often costly and magnificent. King Ina expended 365 pounds of gold, and 2887 pounds of silver, on decorating one of his holy places; but the fear of the Danes, we have reason to believe, made them prefer these portable donations to the Deity, to structures of heavy building, which could not be hid or transported from the reach of the pagans. As late as the days of Edgar the Peaceable, all their monasteries were built of boards, and few, if any, private houses had glass in their windows. The Anglo-Saxon nobility spent their lives in low miserable buildings, and their great revenues (all but superstitious bequests to the church) in drunken hospitality. The most admired of the Saxon churches seem to have been low and gloomy, their walls immoderately thick, their windows few and small, with semicircular arches at the top.
Painting, statuary, embroidery, and the art of stain ing glass, were introduced among the Anglo-Saxons by their connexion with that country, from which they bor rowed Christianity. We cannot suppose that their painters were much superior to their sculptors, of whose works the relics that are delineated by antiqua ries give us no splendid idea; but how far they exceed ed or fell beneath the models afforded them by contem porary Europe, is a question of some curiosity, and which, though of little importance in history, it might amuse the curious to determine. With all the evils that attend superstition, it has (at least when it took the turn of idolatry) contributed more or less to promote the fine arts in every country.
12. Commerce was but little attended to during the heptarchy. Offa, the king of Mercia, was checked by the emperor Charlemagne in his mercantile specula tions, with some portion of that jealousy which his suc cessor, at the distance of a thousand years, spews to British prosperity ; and although he sent his ambassa dor Alcuin to conciliate matters, the poet seems to have done little more than to fortify his own interests at the imperial court. Pilgrims to holy places, while they pretended to be conveying the teeth and hair of saints, and other trumpery of superstition, were often more usefully employed in the smuggling of light and valua ble merchandize. Alfred had ideas of commerce suit able to his enlargement of mind. He sent valuable presents to the inhabitants of the Indian peninsula ; and from the gifts of silk and frankincense* which he con ferred on his favourites, it is evident that he had found means to acquire sonic of the rich productions of the east. Those voyages of Ochtcr and Wulfstan, already mentioned, testify that our mariners went at a very early period to the north, both for the purposes of traf fic, as well as in one instance for discovery. London, as early as the seventh century, is mentioned as a port much frequented by merchants ; and we hear at that period of ships making voyages to Rome.