ay indulge in a little excursus
into lingual affinities of wide range. The root _mol_ is clear enough.
It is of the same stock as the Greek _mala_, Latin _mul_(_tum_), and
Hebrew _m'la_. But, _Rose_? We call her Queen of Flowers, and since
before the Persian poets made much of her, she was everywhere _Regina
Florum_. Why should not the name mean simply the Queen, the Chief?
Now, so few who know Keltic know also Hebrew, and so few who know
Hebrew know also Keltic, that few know the surprising extent of the
affinity that exists--clear as day--between the Keltic and the Hebrew
vocabularies. That the word _Rose_ may be a case in point is not
hazardously speculative."]

Summing now the features I have too shortly specified in the Saxon
character,--its imagination, its docility, its love of knowledge,
and its love of beauty, you will be prepared to accept my conclusive
statement, that they gave rise to a form of Christian faith which
appears to me, in the present state of my knowledge, one of the
purest and most intellectual ever attained in Christendom;--never yet
understood, partly because of the extreme rudeness of its expression
in the art of manuscripts, and partly because, on account of its very
purity, it sought no expression in architecture, being a religion
of daily life, and humble lodging. For these two practical reasons,
first;--and for this more weighty third, that the intellectual
character of it is at the same time most truly, as Dean Stanley
told you, childlike; showing itself in swiftness of imaginative
apprehension, and in the fearlessly candid application of great
principles to small things. Its character in this kind may be
instantly felt by any sympathetic and gentle person who will read
carefully the book I have already quoted to you, the Venerable Bede's
life of St. Cuthbert; and the intensity and sincerity of it in the
highest orders of the laity, by simply counting the members of Saxon
Royal families who ended their lives in monasteries.

Now, at the very moment when this faith, innocence, and ingenuity were
on the point of springing up into their fruitage, comes the Northern
invasion; of the real character of which you can gain a far truer
estimate by studying Alfred's former resolute contest with and victory
over the native Norman in his paganism, than by your utmost endeavours
to conceive the character of the afterwards invading Norman,
disguised, but not changed, by Christianity. The Norman coul