y the Anglo-Saxons, begun in 449, seemed at
first to promise only retrogression and the ruin of an existing
civilization. These fierce barbarians found among the Celts of Britain a
Roman culture, and the Christian religion exerting its influence for
order and humanity. Their mission seemed to be to destroy both. In their
original homes in the forests of northern Germany, they had come little
if at all into contact with Roman civilization. At any rate, we may
assume that they had felt no Roman influence capable of stemming their
national and ethnical tendencies. We cannot yet solve the difficult
problem of the extent of their mingling with the conquered Celts in
Britain. In spite of learned opinions to the contrary, the evidence now
available seems to point to only a small infusion of Celtic blood. The
conquerors seem to have settled down to their new homes with all the
heathenism and most of the barbarism they had brought from their old
home, a Teutonic people still.

In these ruthless, plundering barbarians, whose very breath was battle,
and who seemed for the time the very genius of disorder and ruin, there
existed, nevertheless, potentialities of humanity, order, and
enlightenment far exceeding those of the system they displaced. In all
their barbarism there was a certain nobility; their courage was
unflinching; the fidelity, even unto death, of thane to lord, repaid the
open-handed generosity of lord to thane; they honored truth; and even
after we allow for the exaggerated claims made for a chivalrous devotion
that did not exist, we find that they held their women in higher respect
than was usual even among many more enlightened peoples.

There are few more remarkable narratives in history than that of the
facility and enthusiasm with which the Anglo-Saxons, a people
conservative then as now to the degree of extreme obstinacy, accepted
Christianity and the new learning which followed in the train of the
new religion. After a few lapses into paganism in some localities, we
find these people, who lately had swept Christian Britain with fire and
sword, themselves became most zealous followers of Christ. Under the
influence of the Roman missionaries who, under St. Augustine, had begun
their work in the south in 597 among the Saxons and Jutes, and under the
combined influence of Irish and Roman missionaries in the north and east
among the Angles, theological and secular studies were pursued with
avidity. By the end of t