buted to it by the Roman historian[2] at a time
when that virtue was no longer a Roman one. Such a character could not
but have its leanings toward Christianity; and, when brought under its
influences, it put forth at once new qualities, like a wild flower
which, on cultivation, acquires for the first time a perfume. Its spirit
of reverence developed into humility, and its natural fortitude into a
saintly patience; while its fierceness changed into a loyal fervour; and
the crimes to which its passions still occasionally hurried it were
voluntarily expiated by penances as terrible. Even King Penda, the hater
of Christianity, hated an insincere faith more. 'Of all men,' he said,
'he that I have ever most despised is the man who professes belief in
some God and yet does not obey his laws.' Such was that character
destined to produce under the influences of faith such noble specimens
of Christian honour and spiritual heroism. From the beginning its
greatness was one

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home;

and in later ages it became yet more eminently domestic, combining
household ties with the pursuit of letters and science in colleges which
still preserved a family life. Its monks had no vocation to the life of
the desert; in this unlike the Irish saints, who, like those of Eastern
lands, delighted in the forest hermitage and the sea-beat rock.

The Anglo-Saxon race was but a branch of that great Teuton-Scandinavian
race, generically one whether it remained in the German forests or
wandered on to the remoter coasts of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. It was
the race which the Romans called 'the Barbarians,' but which they could
never conquer. A stern history had trained it for a wonderful destiny.
Christianity in mastering the Greek had possessed itself of the
intellect of the world, and in mastering Rome had found access to all
those vast regions conquered by Roman arms, opened out by Roman roads,
governed by Roman law, and by it helped to the conception of a higher
law. But the Greek and the Roman civilisations had, each of them,
corrupted its way, and yielded to the seductions of pride, sense, and
material prosperity; and, as a consequence, both had become incapable
of rendering full justice to much that is highest in Christianity. That
which they lacked the 'Barbaric' race alone was capable of supplying. In
its wanderings under darkened skies and amid pitiless climates it had
preserved an innocence and simpl