t." "We ne kunnen," as Alfred the Great, its first
translator, ends the passage. Who does not see--notwithstanding the
difference of time, place, character, and all stage circumstance--who
does not see rise before him the judgment-hall of Socrates, hear the
solemn last words to his judges: "I go to death, and you to life, but
which of us goeth to the better is known to God alone--+adelon panti
plen e to theo+"?

Such is the stern and high manner in which this conflict in England
between the religions of Woden and Christ is conducted. There in the
seventh century is the depth of heart, the energy of soul, the pity and
the insight which appear in other forms in after ages. The roll of
English names in the _Acta Sanctorum_ is the living witness of the
sincerity, the intensity with which the same men who fought to the
death for Woden at the Winwaed, or speculated with Coifi on the eternal
mystery, accepted the faith which Rome taught, the ideal from Galilee
transmuted by Roman imagination, Roman statesmanship. The Saintly
Ideal lay on them like a spell: earth existed but to die in, life was
given but to pray for death. Rome taught the Saxon and the Jute that
all they had hitherto prayed for, glory in battle, earthly power and
splendour, must be renounced, and become but as the sound of bells from
a city buried deep beneath the ocean. Instead of defiance, Rome taught
them reverence; instead of pride, self-abasement; instead of the
worship of delight, the worship of sorrow. In this faith the Saxon and
the Jute strove with tragic seriousness to live. But the old faith
died hard, or lived on side by side with the new, far into the Middle
Age. Literature reflects the inner struggles of the period: the
war-song of Brunanburh, the mystic light which hangs upon the verses of
Caedmon, the melancholy of Cynewulf's lyrics. Yet what a contrast is
the England delineated by Bede with Visigothic Spain, with Lombard
Italy, or Frankish Gaul, as delineated by Gregory of Tours!

Thus these Angles, Jutes, and Saxons, slowly disciplining themselves to
the new ideal--to them in the ninth century come the Vikings. They are
not less conspicuous in valour, nor less profoundly sensitive to the
wonder and mystery of life, the poets in other lands of the Eddas and
of the Northern Myths. England as we know it is not yet formed.
Amongst the formative influences of English religion and English
freedom, and ultimately of this ideal of modern