uest.
The brave man might perish, but even then he won victory; for he was
invited to sit with heroes at the table of the gods. "None but the
brave deserves the fair," is merely a modern softened rendering of the
old spirit.

The Christian religion, which was brought to the Teuton after he had
come to England, found him already cast in a semi-heroic mold. But
before he could proceed on his matchless career of world conquest,
before he could produce a Shakespeare and plant his flag in the
sunshine of every land, it was necessary for this new faith to develop
in him the belief that a man of high ideals, working in unison with
the divinity that shapes his end, may rise superior to fate and be
given the strength to overcome the powers of evil and to mold the
world to his will. The intensity of this faith, swaying an energetic
race naturally fitted to respond to the great moral forces of the
universe, has enabled the Anglo-Saxon to produce the world's greatest
literature, to evolve the best government for developing human
capabilities, and to make the whole world feel the effect of his
ideals and force of character. At the close of the nineteenth century,
a French philosopher wrote a book entitled _Anglo-Saxon Superiority,
In What Does it Consist?_ His answer was, "In self-reliance and in the
happiness found in surmounting the material and moral difficulties of
life." A study of the literature in which the ideals of the race are
most artistically and effectively embodied will lead to much the same
conclusion.

The History of Anglo-Saxon England.--The first task of the
Anglo-Saxons after settling in England was to subdue the British, the
race that has given King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table to
English literature. By 600 A.D., after a century and a half of
struggle, the Anglo-Saxons had probably occupied about half of
England.

They did not build on the civilization that Rome had left when she
withdrew in 410, but destroyed the towns and lived in the country. The
typical Englishman still loves to dwell in a country home. The work of
Anglo-Saxon England consisted chiefly in tilling the soil and in
fighting.

The year 597 marks an especially important date, the coming of St.
Augustine, who brought the Christian faith to the Anglo-Saxons.
Education, literature, and art followed finding their home in the
monasteries.

For nearly 400 years after coming to England, the different tribes
were not united under one