A.D. 885.] VISION OF CHARLES LE GROS. city of Rochester; but the. citizens making a stout resistance, Alfred came to their aid and raised the siege, and compelled the pagans to retire to their ships, where he slew numbers of them and divided their spoil among his followers. In this year also king Alfred sent a strong fleet into East-Anglia, where they found sixteen vessels of pirates at the mouth of the river Stour, and boldly attacking them, they slew them all and possessed themselves of the ships and the spoil; but such of the Danes as could escape to their ships engaged with the English in another naval battle, in which, owing to the supineness of the latter, they were taken off their guard and a multitude of them slain, while the Danes retired in triumph. The emperor Charles's vision of purgatory. In the year of our Lord 885, Stephen sat in the Roman chair five years and eight days. In the same year Charles, the son of Louis, monarch of the Roman empire and of the kingdom of the Franks, called together the bishops and nobles of his kingdom and related to them a wonderful vision which he saw, as follows :— " In the name of God, the supreme King of kings, I, Charles, king of the Franks and patrician of the Romans, on the sacred night of the Lord's day, after finishing my devotions, testify that as I was going to my couch, a terrible voice addressed me, saying, ' Charles, thy spirit shall presently go forth from thee for a season,' and straightway I was rapt in the spirit, and he who bore me was very bright to look upon, and he held in his hand a clue of thread, which sent forth a beam of clearest light. Proceeding to unwind it, he said to me, ' Behold this shining thread,—fasten it tightly to the thumb of your right hand; for by means of it you shall be led through the maze of the infernal torments.' Having so said, he advanced before me rapidly and led me by the glittering clue into deep and fiery valleys full of pits burning with pitch and sulphur, lead, wax, and tallow. There I found the bishops of my father and my uncles, and when I tremblingly asked them why they were suffering such excessive torments, they answered, ' We were the bishops of your father and your uncles, and when we should have exhorted and entreated them and their people to live in peace and concord,