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He continued, however, during his reign, to manifest the peaceful, quiet, and serious character which had led him to enter the monastery, and which had probably been strengthened and confirmed by the influences and habits to which he had been accustomed there. He had, however, a very able, energetic, and warlike minister, who managed his affairs with great ability and success for a long course of years. Ethelwolf, in the mean time, leaving public affairs to his minister, continued to devote himself to the pursuits to which his predilections inclined him. He visited monasteries; he cultivated learning; he endowed the Church; he made journeys to Rome. All this time, his kingdom, which had before almost swallowed up the other kingdoms of the Heptarchy, became more and more firmly established, until, at length, the Danes came in, as is described in the last chapter, and brought the whole land into the most extreme and imminent danger. The case did not, however, become absolutely desperate until after Ethelwolf's death, as will be hereafter explained.

Dr. Salomon Mueller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to the result of whose personal experience I shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees, and though toward evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hillsides and disappear in the darker valleys.

Some of the most eminent men of Rome had long been convinced of the necessity of this reform. It had been meditated by the younger Scipio Africanus, and proposed by C. Gracchus. The Roman people, however, always offered it the most violent opposition. But Drusus still had many partisans. The Italian allies looked up to him as their leader, and loudly demanded the rights which had been promised them. It was too late to retreat; and, in order to oppose the formidable coalition against him, Drusus had recourse to sedition and conspiracy. A secret society was formed, in which the members bound themselves by a solemn oath to have the same friends and foes with Drusus, and to obey all his commands. The ferment soon became so great that the public peace was more than once threatened. The Allies were ready to take up arms at the first movement. The Consuls, looking upon Drusus as a conspirator, resolved to meet his plots by counterplots. But he knew his danger, and whenever he went into the city kept a strong body-guard of attendants close to his person.

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