ns of the age of Homer had
regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city of the Laestrygonian
cannibals. There was one province of our island in which, as Procopius
had been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was
such that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region the
spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at
midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. The
speech of the dead was distinctly heard by the boatmen, their weight
made the keel sink deep in the water; but their forms were invisible
to mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian, the
contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Tribonian, gravely
related in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching the country in
which the founder of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple.
Concerning all the other provinces of the Western Empire we have
continuous information. It is only in Britain that an age of fable
completely separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric and
Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are historical men and
women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred
are mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose
adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus.

At length the darkness begins to break; and the country which had been
lost to view as Britain reappears as England. The conversion of the
Saxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series of
salutary revolutions. It is true that the Church had been deeply
corrupted both by that superstition and by that philosophy against which
she had long contended, and over which she had at last triumphed. She
had given a too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient
schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policy
and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had
contributed to deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the sublime
theology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to elevate many
intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a later
period were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in the
seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief merits. That
the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civil
magistrate would, in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age
of good governme